


The Second Life and Adventures of Benjamin Finn

by Lourdes23



Category: Fable 3 (Video Game)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, F/M, Forgiveness, Grave Robbers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Miscarriage, Possession, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 56,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lourdes23/pseuds/Lourdes23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes good men commit terrible wrongs. Sometimes even Heroes need to be saved. The question is will she let him save her, and the world, when he's the reason the Hero needs a savior of her own? The story of Ben Finn's return to Albion as told by Ben.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which the Author Begins Anew

 

 

 

I should start by begging your pardon if I go about this in an impractical manner. But as almost nothing of my life’s decisions has been predominantly sensible, I see no reason to step out of character for you here. I had thought once to put the story of my life to print, at the request of those I knew earlier in life, and had even begun to pen a few pages.

Had I continued with my prior attempt at cataloguing my life I would have told you of how I came from a small settlement my siblings and I called Gunk, though its true name was nothing quite so fitting. I would have told you of my brothers, my parents, our little shop, and the antics we younger Finns would ensconce ourselves in to pass the time in such a remote and uninteresting place as Gunk, and how it was that I discovered the aptitudes for the skills I now rely on for my very survival.

I would have told you of the loss of my family and detailed the downward spiral I lived through as a result; complete with many of the trials I placed upon my conscience during that time. Of the licentious women I came to frequent, the affinity for alcohol I developed, and even my experimenting in dealings that were not quite on the up and up. I would have then illustrated for you of how I came to find the right side of the law, if quite by accident; and of Major Swift, the man who reminded me what it was to have honor and something to strive for.

These things would have described to you how it was that I came to be the man I am today.

But you see I cannot truthfully make that claim, for I am no longer the man those events made me.

Instead I will begin my tale at the moment I stepped away from my old life and embraced my new life… if only by accident yet again. Some things will never change, and I see now that such a constant is sometimes for the best.

And so I shall start by telling you that my name is Benjamin Finn and, at the time this story begins, I was quite famously known as The Captain Benjamin Finn. Not just captain, _The_ Captain; in much the same manner a citizen of Albion would refer to The Queen, or The Kingdom. Mention of the title in that singular way anywhere within these borders and even a child would know the speaker was referring to me. As a man who came from such small beginnings it would have no doubt undone my modesty had I not spent the first two years of my newfound fame abroad and thus unaware.

For you see I had not stumbled into iconic status by happenstance as I had so many events in my life. This I had earned when I stood with a small band, lead by the Queen of Albion herself, against a threat so ominous it had, at that point, been impossible to kill; a threat that was fully capable of destroying a kingdom simply by arriving upon our shores. This evil we saviors did defeat only after we’d successfully staged our rebellion against the new queen’s tyrannical brother just one year prior. Yet we few mortal men and women had come out victorious from both trials, and Albion’s people had lived to prosper the next day and every day thereafter despite a great many fears that such an end result would never be.

Thus it was that I came to be The Captain. _Albion’s Captain_. And true to my less than prudent tendencies, my first official act as Albion’s Captain was to take an indefinite leave of absence from my homeland. To see the world, I’d told myself, as I’d always wanted to.

Though this reason was not entirely truthful. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So it was two years after the battle that saved a country in which I stepped foot on my native soil once more and came face to face with my popularity. My return was no more intentional than any other monumental event in my life; a misinterpretation on the harbormaster’s part which caused me to board the wrong ship by accident and so rather than traveling to a port of tropical climates and woman who found pale men exotic and thrilling, I found myself standing upon a dock in a land I had not expected to return to any time soon.

Bowerstone Industrial had changed more than I’d given it credit for being capable of. It was far cleaner than I recalled it being to start with; the soot scrubbed from buildings and roads, as well as its denizens’ faces and clothes. And those same people smiled more, though not as much in idle moments as they did when they laid eyes upon me. At first I’d thought that perhaps they were simply respectful of the uniform I still wore, having not the heart to remove myself from my past all together, until I heard mention of myself in their whispers. “Look – it’s The Captain. He’s come back to us!”

My first taste of renown that did not involve a wanted poster; I would be lying if I said it did not set my head spinning. Rooms at fine inns were heavily discounted, rounds at taverns were given out in my honor, and women flocked to me. Ah yes, how they flocked. Most men would give their eye teeth to have offers laid at their feet such as the ones I received. And I would be lying again if I said to you that I accepted none of them. Naturally with such attention laid before me, I found the idea of setting off to the lands of my original intent a far less attractive prospect and chose instead to reacquaint myself with my homeland for a time.

And so it came to be that one particularly fine evening I was enjoying the company of a lovely woman who had until just that evening been think on the advances of a young dockworker, while partaking in the complimentary libations that seemed to be thrust upon me no matter which establishment I entered. I had taken lodging above the same well-to-do tavern where my companion and I enjoyed our drinks and the pretense that we were still debating on whether to continue our festivities privately in my room.

It was there that what I can only describe as the most unpleasant tingle I’d ever experienced took hold of my spine, though not unfamiliarly. I’d had moments such as these in battle; times when I’d ducked just as a bullet sailed over my head, or where my body moved seemingly without reason to find the unknown sword at my back had ruined only my shirt yet not the flesh beneath. Jammy incidents to be sure, and all of them initiated by that terrible tingle that seemed too physical a reaction to be mere instinct. And here it was, sitting in a brightly lit tavern surrounded by laughter and music and revelry, that I could not shed the impending sense of danger until I could focus on nothing but finding the menace I knew beyond reason was present.

While the buxom woman at my side chatted and flirted and began to let hints slip that she was at last willing to discuss our evening’s intended activities, I could do nothing beyond pretend to listen as I searched out the source of my unease. It did not take long.

Two figures at my back, half hidden by a large piano, set the feeling within my spine aflame when I laid eyes on them as I feigned a good stretch in my seat. There was nothing particularly remarkable about them. Their plain clothes, wide hats and mugs of ale before them could have marked them for any of the other patrons in the tavern. Yet their mugs had been warm for some time judging from the lack of sweat on the crockery, and their posture as they leaned over a few sheets of parchment betrayed their hidden tension.

These were not bandits or murders. They were something else – something premeditated and unsavory.

I again became aware of the young woman at my arm, now asking me through a taunting pout and an imprudently loud tone what had stolen my attention from her. One of the conspirators glanced my way. I smiled for the girl.

“I was just wondering what you look like when you’re dancing,” I replied in an equally boisterous tone, more for the two at my back than her benefit. “There’s a piano back there. Why don’t you go ask the nice man to play something lively so you can show me?” At this her pursed lips split into a smile and she stood, accepting my coin as she sauntered over to the musician. Her slow pace gave me an excuse to turn once more in my seat and watch the men at their table while pretending I only had eyes for the girl’s hips.

The table was empty.

Quick as I could I scanned the room and found the second of the pair as he vanished outside into the night. Pausing only to retrieve my holster and rifle from the back of my chair I abandoned my mug and pretty companion to follow them into the darkness. If the girl noticed my leaving I’m sure I don’t remember.

The night air along the canals of Bowerstone Industrial was never without a chill, but years of necessity had trained me to tolerate all but the most extreme conditions. After all even the most adept marksman could not be expected to draw their weapon if it was wrapped within a woolen cloak or if he was too heavily padded within his coat. Thus I was able to pay the cold no mind as I followed my quarry through the darkness at a relatively safe distance. Or so I thought.

For it was after a few turns down darkened alleys, down a short stairway that lead to the lower canal walkways, and beneath a bridge I found myself face to blade with the very men I sought out.

“It is a poor scout that wears heavy leather boots while stalking his prey,” the man wielding the knife informed me with a foreign accent, to which I could only agree with by a shrug of my shoulders. “Killing you will bring unwanted attention to this place,” his high-pitched voice continued, “but we cannot afford to have anyone interfere, and we cannot afford to leave you behind now that you clearly know.”

“Ah but there’s the beauty,” I smiled cheerfully to my would-be assassin, “I don’t know anything. At least not anything beyond the way the pair of you make my skin crawl.”

“Lies will not spare you,” the second man hissed in the same dialect. “Kill him quickly, before he can call for help.”

The knife at my face flashed dull moonlight and without conscious decision I lifted an arm beneath my attacker’s, rolling his stab wild and grasping his wrist when it met my hand. Though my forte has always been in firearms I am not without skills in other areas of combat; a fact to which I owe Major Swift my eternal thanks for his insistence that his men be trained to fight in any combat situation.

Bones broke between my fingers when I hardened my grip and wrenched his arm as I knew I should, and the man in my hold howled, but only until I was able to plunge his own knife into his throat. When his cohort advanced on me the unfortunate fellow met a similar end with my ill-gotten blade entering his eye before becoming irrevocably lodged in the back of his skull. With two dead conspirators at my feet I was unsettled to notice that the feeling of danger had not abandoned me, and I was now unable to question these men to discover the nature of my unease.

I immediately bent low to search the bodies, retrieving anything I might later be able to use to identify the threat I was certain that they had posed. An old book, letters and an odd assortment of papers, an amulet with a symbol I did not recognize, and the strange tattoo each man bore on his left hand which I committed to memory to the best of my ability in the low light before finally leaving the area behind and returning quietly to my rented room at the tavern, oblivious to the patrons I had reveled with not more than a half an hour prior.

It was behind the safety of my locked door that I spread my plundered evidence upon my bed and began to sift through the items one by one. It was tedious and without much excitement, but I knew better than to ignore my instincts when they told me something was out of place.

The scraps of paper turned out to be a jumble of messages that contained instructions mentioning some such nonsense about what I could only assume to be an urn or vase that the men had been sent out to find; and about their god, whom the writers of the messages believed lived within this vessel. Apparently their religious order had lost this container in which their god lived, and these two had been sent out into the world to find it. At first I began to feel a little sorry for the two blokes I had dispatched, for it seemed I had interrupted them as they sought to complete some religious quest.

Until I opened the book.

For the record I am not now, nor have I ever been what you would consider a scholar, though I did spend my fair share of time in the Brightwall Library. Nor can I claim to be a strategist or any other sort of intellectual type. There was always a very good reason my suggestions were disregarded if not outright ignored. I am not now, nor was I ever, one capable to puzzling out academic matters. I do however possess a reasonable amount of common sense and logic, though I will admit here if nowhere else that at times I fail to utilize either. That moment upon my rented bed, however, was not one of those times.

Though most of the symbols upon the pages were foreign to me, in the margins were words written more recently and in modern text. It was these words that drew my eye and tightened my insides. I knew what I was reading. I knew what it meant.

It meant that my carousing here in Bowerstone Industrial had come to an abrupt end and it was time that I resumed my duties as Albion’s Captain.

It also meant that I owed someone a visit; someone who I was quite certain would have none of the kind words or smiles for me I had been receiving up until now.

The moment I had been unconsciously avoiding since my return to Albion was upon me. And this time I could find no pretense to postpone the reunion in which I was certain would not be a happy affair.

 

XXXX


	2. In Which the Author Renews an Old Acquaintanceship

It is said that a woman scorned is a force to be met at the offender’s peril. While I’d never in my past had the displeasure of knowing this personally, having never remained in one of my fleeting dalliances long enough to earn such fury upon my departure, I fully believed these words to be accurate if not understated. It was this belief that had me dreading what I was about to do and yet I saw no way around it. There were things more sacred in this world than preserving my anatomy, I reminded myself, and if she saw fit to break my nose or dislocate my jaw it would be entirely within her rights given our last encounter.

It was therefore much to my dread when at last twin doors of polished wood swung open before me, revealing a grand chamber bedecked in shades of white, gold and pale blue which personified the one who presided here. Before I could change my mind I entered, striding down the long blue runner as quickly as possible and with what little dignity I had managed to preserve despite my haste. And there upon the dais, staring at me from eyes so bulbous they could very well have rolled down to her fine satin shoes, was the object of my discomfort; the Hero Queen of Albion herself.

I remember once being disturbed by those eyes, years before when shining blue-grey had replaced what had once been a rich brown somewhere along our first journey together. I recall previously wondering how such a change could come about for certainly dyes could not be used to change the shade of one’s eyes. An effect of the use of Will, no doubt, but disconcerting nonetheless. Yet it was not long before I became enthralled by that metallic tone and the warmth portrayed there that had nothing to do with color.

The astonishment she exhibited upon seeing me standing once more before her turned to abject loathing rather quickly – a bit harsher of a reaction than I had anticipated – and a sneer I’d witnessed her brandish in battle countless times split her face menacingly. If I was to have any chance at all to deliver the knowledge I had discovered that night beside Industrial’s canals I had to prevent her from expelling me from the castle.

“I know, I know, but first hear me out,” I said carefully, holding out a pleading hand as though a gesture alone would silence her. A foolish attempt to be certain; armed soldiers, accusations of treason, and threats of a traitor’s death had not been enough to silence her in the past, and yet here I hoped foolishly that somehow I might succeed where others had not.

I was wrong.

“How dare you presume-” she spluttered, her rage compounding rapidly, yet I could not allow her to enter into a full tirade. She had to be told, I reminded myself, bleating that fact within my mind in an attempt to drive off the thoughts of bowing meekly and backing away. She had to know.

“Wren, wait,” I insisted, hoping that perhaps familiarity might succeed only to find that once again I had miscalculated, for she was on her feet at the sound of her name, the leather gauntlets at her sides sparking with the onset of her fury and bringing those very relevant concerns all the more present within my mind. I had anticipated her being angry enough with me to shout, to strike a blow, but the quivering fury I was witnessing within her eyes seemed more akin to hate than I’d originally presumed. Suddenly being thrown from the castle seemed like the most reasonable course of action I could hope for.

“You assume you have the right to come here and address me by name?” She was nearly screeching now – _never_ a good sign. “You assume you have the right to come here at all?! I should-”

“Of course!” I blurted, before the horrors she could describe to me met with me ears. I had no desire to be made aware of what she had planned for me these two years passed. I was not a cowardly man to be certain, but this woman was a Hero, and Heroes were capable of things we average men and women could not fathom. I may not have been a coward, but neither did I fancy the details of my tortuous execution to be laid out before me in graphic detail. “I absolutely have a right to be here! As a Captain of Albion’s Royal Army-”

“ _Former_ Captain.” She spat. Ah yes, the Queen of Albion was in fine form indeed this day.

“I never gave up my post,” I argued, though when I say argue I mean more to the point I remonstrated pitiably. There was no true disagreeing with her while she was in this state. “I told you I was going to travel – to take a leave of absence.” I clarified and with that statement she threw out her arms in outrage.

“Is that what it’s called now?” She challenged, and I understood that this was it. Here was the attack I no doubt had been bequeathed two years prior. “That’s strange,” she continued on without so much as to pause for breath, “because I thought it was you leaving once you got what you were after.” I found myself astonished at how much those words stung. I’d never imagined being the one to cause emotional pain to another could have such a profoundly similar impact upon the deliverer.

“I know that’s how it seemed to you,” I wanted desperately to unmake the rift I had caused in our relationship, yet Wren was not ready for that clearly, for there was no room in her outrage for my apologies and I was only making things worse with my inadequate pleas.

“You left my bed in the middle of the night, Ben!” Her voice reverberated through the throne room so violently that I was quite certain its echoes would be heard throughout the corridors and beyond the castle walls. “Like a man leaving a whore once his paid hour was up! For two years I heard nothing from you – not even a letter telling me you wanted no more of me than that! Why didn’t you leave a couple of coins on the bedside table to complete the insult properly?!”

If her words before had stung, this question threatened to empty my chest. I’d heard it said once that a man could hurt a woman with actions, but a woman’s words would hurt a man like no other experience. The man who had coined that phrase – and I am to this day convinced it was a man – obviously had stood in much the same situation I found myself presently.

“Look, I never meant to-”

“Don’t you dare patronize me!” She’d not allow me to speak anything that even came remotely near to an apology, I could see that finally. She wanted no part of my attempt to make amends, and if I continued to try it would enrage her all the more and would lose what opportunity I still had to issue my warning.

So it would be straight to business, I noted dejectedly and with that I pulled the tattered book I’d purloined from the cultists free of my belt pouch and held it before her in plain sight.

“You’re right,” I said if only to keep her from interrupting me once again. “I owe you more than an apology – much more. Let me start with this.” And without further warning I pitched the book straight at her head – anything less and she’d probably have watched it fall to the floor before accepting something I’d offered. Deftly Wren reached up and snatched it from the air, her shoulder cocked as though debating on if she should return it in similar fashion. If she did I’d no doubt be leaving this room with a concussion.

To my slight yet welcomed surprise, however, she apparently forwent her primary instinct and chose instead to stare at the leather bound cover for a time before at last letting the book fall open in her hands. Knowing it was now only a matter of time I held my tongue and waited for her to at last come to the page I had marked with the various notes pulled from my zealot ‘friends’.

Whatever hope I might have possessed that I had overacted in my initial conclusion of my findings was erased along with the rage that had twisted her features. When next her eyes found me there was no pretending I did not see the fear in those steel blue orbs.

“Where did you get this?”

“From two religious fanatics in Bowerstone Industrial who thought they’d like me better if I was dead. I guess they didn’t appreciate being told they made my skin crawl.” The pages of the book rattled slightly in her hand. “That’s it, isn’t it? The book Walter talked about.” To my extreme dismay, Wren nodded.

“Yes. This is the phrase that unlocked the Crawler’s temple.” Her finger trailed over one of the notes in the margins that I did not have to see to recall.

‘ _Luminous spirits of the sands; impart daybreak and gleam under a quiet moon.’_

These were the words that had signaled the end of the beginning for Wally. Our friend. Her mentor. He’d muttered them so often in his sleep or absently under his breath when lost to thought, that even if I someday became senile and forgot my own name, I would undoubtedly remember that verse until my last day. Though not directly ominous in nature, the knowledge of what those words had meant would be enough to send shivers down most men’s spines.

“Those notes between the pages talk about a vessel,” I explained, knowing now that I could speak my peace without worry of being interrupted by another invective, “one that holds the god those two men’s order worships. That’s what they were looking for.”

If her eyes had not been ready to roll from her skull upon seeing me for the first time in two years, they were certainly ready to do so now. No, definitely not what I had hoped for. “Damn,” I muttered, unable to muster the droll humor she had once confessed to regarding so highly in me. “And here I was hoping I was wrong as usual. It’s Walter, isn’t it? Not some vase or ancient urn. They’re coming for Walter.”

That was all it took. The book snapped shut in her hand and an all too familiar sneer returned, yet this time I was quite certain that my physical wellbeing was not in jeopardy from her ire as it had been moments prior. Now someone else had a problem; a glowing, livid, and exceedingly _dangerous_ problem.

Said problem’s voice then grated at me from between gnashing teeth; “Over my rotting corpse.”

  


XXXX

  


I should like to be able to tell you that at that moment Wren agreed to bury the hatchet and she and I were able to slip back into the carefree banter and high spirited relationship we’d shared during our previous journey together. But that was not the way of things. In point of fact, the exceptionally hostile Hero Queen abandoned me the very moment she let slip that colorful yet completely plausible oath, and I had no doubt whatsoever that Wren would sooner allow herself to fall to the cult’s assumedly murderous intent then let them have Walter’s body – possible dormant inhabitant notwithstanding.

It had never occurred to me, to any of us for that matter, that killing Walter had failed to kill the Crawler as well. The day Walter had died the sun had reemerged from behind a shroud of blackness, the shadow-spawned creatures had faded into obscurity with their master and peace had befallen our tattered nation once again. There had been no sign that we had failed in our task and none had reared its head since that day to give us reason to doubt our victory. Yet the notes in the book were very clear in inferring that the demon was still alive despite its host’s mortality.

If by no further dint than the tingle that had seemingly taken up permanent residence in my spine, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the book was right, and for reasons I had not even attempted to fathom Wren shared my austere conviction.

Somehow that monstrosity was still alive.

Despite all of these concerns, it understandably took a few additional moments before I was at last able to leave the throne room and seek out the Hero whom I had enraged to the point of fearing for my personal safety.

I was at last able to begin the orderly check of the castle for the departed monarch, hoping that she had not magically popped from the vicinity as she had once had a penchant for doing. At length while searching the castle gardens I found my first clue of her passage; a score of castle guards gathered before the large golden doors to Walter’s resting place, presently receiving instructions from two quite opposite lieutenants. The taller of the two officers glanced briefly my way, dismissing my presence almost completely before, like a scene from one of that Morley fellow’s comedies, he snapped to attention and saluted me, jabbing his fellow in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

“Captain Finn!” The man exclaimed, thus bringing twenty two uniformed men to attention and in perfect ranks before me. “Sir! It is an honor!”

I’d heard similar sentiments from the first moment of my return to my homeland of course, from guards in Bowerstone Industrial and soldiers along the route to the castle, and yet I cannot deny experiencing a fleeting thrill at their awe of me despite the situation at hand and the knowledge that I had previously denied a need for such obsequiousness.

Yet as I stated the moment was transient and my previous disposition was not to be put off so easily. “Carry on, men,” I instructed with a perfunctory nod, and had begun to step around the officers towards the golden doors when, to my unpleasant surprise, the two lieutenants purposefully blocked my path.

“Er, begging your pardon, Captain,” the taller of the two stammered apologetically as though more concerned I might think badly of him than anything else, “but Her Majesty has instructed that no one be allowed to enter Sir Walter’s Sanctuary but her.” The shorter man’s eyes darted nervously to his companion, in silent warning perhaps, but for reasons beyond my knowledge he held his tongue.

Feeling every bit of my ill humor finally build to the surface I jerked an impatient thumb over my shoulder. “Is that so? All right then, I’ll just go back the way I came. When Her Majesty comes out of there, I think I’ll leave it to you to tell her who kept me out.” I had little doubt that Wren would fail to twitch an eyebrow at my denied access to Walter’s tomb - indeed the instructions had possibly been given specifically with me in mind – yet the officers before me seemed unaware of the queen’s current hostile opinion of me and began to shift uncomfortably within their boots.

“Idiot!” The shorter one found his voice and spine at last. “You gonna make _The Captain_ wait?! Why not bloody tell _Lady Page_ to leave off the next time she pays a visit, too?” The thinner man blanched at this and, in all honesty, if I’d been his position at the mention of Page’s name in such a manner I’d have lost my nerve as well.

“Look, I didn’t mean anything by it…” the taller man drawled and shot a nervous glance over his shoulder to the gleaming doors. “You are Captain Finn, after all. And it sounds like you’ve got important business with the queen that can’t wait.” The insinuation that I was to agree with his excuse was clear, and although I could sympathize with the prospect of facing down the queen’s wrath, I also knew this man wouldn’t last a minute in battle at her side if he didn’t develop a thicker skin.

“Things are going to be changing soon, Lieutenant,” I told the man without going into much detail of what I knew but understanding that I should warn him in some fashion or another if he was to be leading the castle guard against a possible onslaught. “You’re going to have to be ready to face the consequences of your decisions, no matter what decisions those may be, and trust me when I say they will be very _real_ , very _deadly_ consequences. If you aren’t ready to take on that responsibility I’d advise you to hand over your command to someone who can stomach it.”

I assume the look I received from the man bore some sort of shock, judging from the reactions of his subordinates, but I had by then sidestepped the officers and was already entering the tomb by the time I finished my warning, therefore failing to notice or care as to what sort of affect my words had on the man.

Beyond the doors I was surprised to find that a space which had once been pleasant gardens exposed to the open air of the grounds beyond the golden doors now held an impossibly tall room painted in pale blues and whites. There wasn’t a true ceiling within the vault, rather several great panes of glass which allowed the daylight into every corner of the room.

And there in the center of the chamber, with her head resting upon the shining golden coffin, Wren lay with her eyes closed and fingers tracing invisible patterns onto the metal.

“I told them not to let anyone enter here,” her murmur was irritated if not the spitting fury she’d displayed in the throne room, and I found myself grateful I’d not had the heart to follow after her immediately, thus allowing her temper time to diminish.

“Yeah, well I’m told I can be pretty persuasive,” I replied, glancing around at the tall lamps in each corner and the candles dotting the floor around his tomb like toadstools in a cave; it seemed she had thought of everything. “Walter never did like dark places, did he?”

“What _are_ you doing here?”

At this demand I bristled slightly. _Right. Straight to business once more_ , I groused to myself.

“Some nutters have it in their heads to let that… that _thing_ out again,” I responded with a touch of irritation. She could be angry that I’d wronged her and I would accept that. But I would not accept her belief that I could leave with our old nemesis standing once more at our door; not when innocent lives were once again at risk. “It took all of us to stop it last time. If by some chance it gets out again do you really think you can face it on your own?” Her eyes opened, appearing flat and dull against the shining metal beneath her cheek, which only furthered along my irritation. “Face it pal, I’m all you’ve got at the moment.”

“For how long, Ben?” She lifted her head and gave me a bitter look that had me wishing I’d never trounced on our friendship as I had. “Until things get complicated? Until I want too much from you? How soon before you cut ties and run again?”

“I’m a soldier of Albion. I don’t run when duty calls.”

“And yet I seem to recall you telling me ‘I’m not cut out to be a general.’” The recital of my past statement was spoken with disgust. “That seems an awful lot like running from duty.”

“I never ran from Albion,” I fought back tersely, resentful of the implications she was setting forth, “the danger was gone and the kingdom had you. Albion didn’t need me.” My words had clearly struck the heart of her fury with me for muted irritation was instantly obliterated by anger once again; and to my astonishment I actually welcomed the altercation. Let her call me a lecher or a rake or whatever such insult as would befit the personal grievance she now had with me. Yet an abuse upon my honor as a soldier was not something I was willing to tolerate. It was the one certainty I had in life; this one redeeming quality bequeathed to me by Major Swift, and I would allow no one – not even Wren – the right to unjustly diminish that.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe-” Wren’s teeth clicked together violently, but before I could think to press her to finish the thought she’d moved on – and quite rapidly at that. “I’m giving you a way out, Ben. If you believe that at any point down the road you might want it I suggest you take it now. Otherwise the moment you falter I’ll cut you down myself.”

“What?!” This revelation caught me quite by surprise, to be certain. Taking her anger out on my offending parts was one matter, but here she was, the wise and just Hero Queen of Albion, talking of ending my life, and by the set of her jaw it was no idle threat. This was out of character for her to say the least; she who hadn’t even been able to bring herself to execute her brother after all of the barbarisms he’d committed while holding the throne, much to my boisterous disapproval. “Because I snuck out of your chambers two years ago?! Wren even for you that’s-”

“No you fool,” she spat, “because the Crawler feeds on fear and doubt the way you do on women and adventure. If you falter it will claim you. I won’t take any chances of having you walking free with that monster hiding inside of you. The last thing we need is having it leap from vessel to vessel, wreaking havoc on good people who have suffered enough!”

In some strange way this put me at ease, if one can truly be at ease while listening to honest threats of death being flung at them. While her threats were as fervent as ever, her reasoning was sound, at least, which meant that she hadn’t sunk so low as I’d initially feared. “Good. Because I remember what that monster did to Walter. I’d sooner take one of your bullets than risk that.”

“Fair enough. But you’d better be ready to do the same for me if it comes to it. Swear it Ben. Right here, if front of the living and the dead alike. You swear to do whatever it takes to stop that thing if it gets out, even if it means _my_ death.”

There was something ominous in the way she pressed for her execution, I thought then. It struck me that she almost seemed to welcome the idea, a notion I found disturbing in a way I couldn’t bring myself to contemplate. This was not the same woman I had left behind two years ago. I’d known her to be melancholy at times during those days, especially when she recalled the boy she’d loved and then lost to her brother’s savagery, yet I could not imagine that the loss of my presence could cause such a fathomable reaction within her.

Yet what could I do; what choice did I have but to agree? This wasn’t a vow – it was an induction. Without saying those words I would be allowed no part in the coming battle, for I knew it would escalate to fighting if not open war, and Wren would be left to face this menace alone.

It was clear to me then that my presence at her side would be only slightly less adequate then Wren’s singular attempts, despite my confidence in my own abilities and the prowess of the illustrious queen before me. In order to stand a chance Wren would require the aid of Page, Kalin and the other allies from our former quest. The more competent fellows she had watching over her, the less likely our Hero Queen was to do something irrevocably stupid.

In point of fact, it had taken all of our combined efforts during the last battle to defeat the Crawler. I had no doubt we would need all of the help we could muster if that terror was unleashed again; though my first and foremost intentions were to see every member of that temporarily mysterious cult delivered a bullet between their eyes before one of them could so much as set foot on the castle grounds.

Yet my intentions for both our allies and the religious sect were neither here nor there, as Wren was at present watching me expectantly, and I knew that if I didn’t speak up quickly she would assume my hesitation was a sign of my wavering committed to that matter at hand.

Albion’s queen wanted my word, and I would be the dutiful captain and concede to her expectations.

“I promise,” With an official manner I saluted my queen, if not my friend, having decided to make one pledge to her and a seperate silent vow to Walter, for he’d have torn the hide from my bones if he had been alive to hear the oath she was demanding I swear to. I hesitated, thinking quickly lest I perjure myself from one promise to the next. “I swear, to stop at nothing,”

_-to take whatever risks I have to -_

“to stand up to any threat - including you,”

_-to save her from herself -_

“to ensure the safety of all of Albion,”

_-and protect the one person you cared about more than anyone._

“To you, and to Walter, I swear.”

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured out that writing as Ben is harder than I thought it would be. In the game he uses two different dialects – his “learned” manner of writing which relies on underused or flowery words and rambles on quite a bit at times when he’s describing things, and then his casual manner of speaking which is sometimes peppered with slang and is more often short at to the point. Switching between the two sometimes threw me off. But I have to say it was a lot of fun to try!


	3. In Which the Answers Beget More Questions

It was once more with my boot planted firmly within my mouth that I did begin my odyssey with my one-time friend by reminding her of exactly why she now detested me, if completely by accident as was customarily my way.

Upon completing my duplicitous vow, we had taken our impromptu audience into the gardens and had been engaged in an astonishingly civil conversation on where we were to begin our search for our unknown adversaries, as it was likely there were more to be found within Albion’s borders, when an idea I though rather clever came to mind. Little did I know it was the introduction of yet another very large and very uncomfortable wedge to be driven between us.

“Whatever happened to that gypsy friend of yours?” I inquired of a sudden and, at Wren’s puzzled expression, clarified; “You know, the creepy blind woman who always knew more than any one person should?”

“Theresa?” By how quickly Wren was able to deduce to whom I referred it was obvious that I was not the only person who found the ancient clairvoyant unsettling.

I snapped my fingers in excitement that my idea was blossoming into something of use. “That’s it! I bet she’d know exactly where to start.”

“I don’t doubt that she would,” Wren mulled, “but the problem is Theresa always found _me_.”

This admission puzzled me. “You mean she never told you how to find her?”

It all seemed rather ridiculous to me, but my Hero companion apparently found my confusion at least moderately unexpected judging by the single brow she arched. “You clearly never spent much time with her.” She stated dryly yet without the rancor she’d been so quick to hurl at me less than an hour passed. “Theresa kept her secrets locked up as-” I watched then as the woman before me stumbled upon the answer within her mind; her features lighting in triumph that she failed to withhold behind her recently adapted irritation at my general existence.

“The Spire!” She announced boldly. “Of course! When she first introduced herself to me she called herself Theresa of the Spire.”

I myself could not suppress a grin at our sudden good fortune and, in my sudden elation at having luck finally turn our way, forgot myself and my tenuous place in the good queen’s indulgence. “Then, old pal, looks like we’re off to Bloodstone!”

Now traveling to Bloodstone was not strictly necessary to reach the Spire, I will admit, as the monolith was not actually located within the village but beyond its coast. In point of fact Driftwood or Industrial would have served our purposes just as well, having docks from which a vessel could be launched to traverse the distance from the mainland. In my defense I’d like to call attention to the fact that the disreputable settlement had long been synonymous with the Spire since the days of the Old Hero Queen, and Bloodstone was the closest port town to our ultimate destination, thus bringing it to the fore of my thoughts when the Spire was mentioned, as would have no doubt been the case for any other citizen of Albion. Any save for Wren that is, who instead perceived my eager input as something else entirely.

“Well aren’t we excited?” Her acerbic posture reestablished, Wren set loose her tongue once more; the query uttered in a dry manner which quite clearly implied her out of its meaning. “Planning on reacquainting yourself with your preferred class of companions, are you?”

“Oh, do pardon me for setting aside personal differences for the larger problem.” I rebuked with far less sincerity than Wren had displayed, which in and of itself was quite the accomplishment. “There’s only one Spire in Albion after all – it wasn’t a difficult guess.” Sufficed to say I was none too thrilled with the reaction I procured and felt very much abused in that instance as a throng of onlookers spied the insult hurled so casually at me. Here I was, at last able to present a useful contribution to the strategy, and she could not see fit to move beyond my past solicitation of less than respectable women. The need to defend myself and my intentions took firm hold over my tongue faster than reason could overtake my actions. “And I’ll have you know,” I pressed on heedlessly, “there’re a few decent women in Industrial who’d have recent cause to take offense at that remark.”

Looking back at the whole encounter and knowing now what was to come, I concede that it was impetuous and ungracious of me to react to her affront in such a way, and had I half of the knowledge then that I do now I might have thought first on what drove her to behave so pugnaciously.

Self-preservation often comes at the expense of another, and in this case it was no different. Yet I was never a man who was known for putting a great deal of forethought into his words and in this I proved no different.

What can I say? I was an idiot.

I was both astounded and abashed to find something that all too closely resembled misery obscure the blue steel of her eyes, if only for the most infinitesimal of moments. Since the dismissal of her initial shock at my return the only animated reaction I myself had drawn from my compatriot had been anger; and rightly so for the mistreatment she clearly felt I had delivered upon her. And so it had never occurred to me that there might be another emotion tied to my treatment of her, such as the pain of broken trust. It was a sobering realization to be certain and one I shan’t forget with any ease.

So there I stood, properly hushed and ready – even hopeful – that she’d strike out at me; perhaps cast a bit of fire or fracture my nose as I had only a short time ago feared she might. I deserved no less than that, I knew, and welcomed her retaliation for once. Instead what I received was a barely perceptible nod of her head followed by a lovely view of her straight back as she turned to guide us to the castle in complete silence.

_Well done, Finn. Well done._

  


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In the end it was by way of a merchant ship commandeered from Industrial and not Bloodstone that we at last fell within the shadow of the gypsy woman’s lair where, after recklessly hastening the passage when his queen requested speed, the captain was immediately ordered to drop anchor and ready a longboat, as the remainder of the journey would be made by Wren and I alone. At the call from the ship’s second I left my self-assigned post at the riggings, having worked aboard enough ships during my years that I could no longer board a vessel and remain inactive with any degree of comfort. With my weaponry gathered from my footlocker in the berthing I then returned to the deck to join up with my erstwhile traveling companion as we waited for our next transport to be readied.

“Are you sure that you want to come?” The Hero Queen asked of me when at last I stood beside her at the rails. “Theresa may not appreciate our intrusion.” It was a cautious exchange; Wren had been nothing if not reserved since our last confrontation outside of Walter’s tomb, a regard that had driven me to avoid contact with her wherever possible, unaccustomed as I was to standing on any sort of formalities with her, pleasant or otherwise. I admit that during our friendship I’d never treated Wren as the royalty she had been. Jokes, jibes, rough cursing and good natured tormenting had followed us through our travels, and now to have to stand on guarded propriety with her was something I had no experience with.

“This _was_ my idea,” I grumbled, though unable to fault her treatment of me. “Can’t very well make a suggestion and not follow through, can I?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Without further explanation as to what we could expect, Wren climbed aboard the secondary vessel and cast off, forcing me to choose between bounding into the longboat or being left behind, of which I decided upon the former option. With oars out and our shoulders working like seasoned deckhands we were quickly enough standing within the Spire’s cavernous port and finding ourselves staring into the blank eyes of the very person whose counsel we had set out to request.

To her credit Wren took everything in stride, as though having one’s actions foretold by a preternatural diviner was an everyday occurrence, which I had to remind myself had long been the case for my companion.

“The last to step foot within my Spire were four Heroes of great purpose and greater power,” the old gypsy moved straight-away into her dialogue without so much as a proper greeting, though I’d come to expect no less from passed dealings. “That you have such an important task before you now is the only reason you were permitted entry here.” Ah yes, we had most assuredly been expected.

“Tell me how to kill the Crawler,” Wren seemed to me to be as unruffled by Theresa as the gypsy was by our arrival, “and we’ll be gone from your sanctuary as quietly as we came.”

In typical fashion for the old seer Theresa seemed to disregard the reply one normally would have been obliged to furnish and instead retreated deeper into the hollowed-out bastion, leaving we uninvited guests no alternative but to follow for our answers.

“The darkness that threatens once again cannot be stopped by any weapon you currently possess,” the gypsy admitted in that obscure way that made one wonder exactly how much of what she knew did she plan to reveal.

“But there _is_ a weapon?”

Theresa’s response was as equanimous as Wren’s request, which made what followed all the more surreal. “To face the demon and destroy it forever, first you must unleash it upon the world.”

Now, I was positive at this point in the dialog that I had just gone quite mad, or perhaps had unknowingly swallowed some vast amount of sea water during our crossing thus poisoning me and bringing about hallucinations.

“Wait,” I dared to speak in my madness, more disturbed by the gypsy’s words than her otherworldliness, “you mean let it out? As in turn it loose? ‘Sorry chum, let us help you out of that body.’ That kind of unleash?”

“The creature will require a body in order to inhabit our world once more. It cannot survive without a host,” Theresa was clearly able to tolerate my sarcasm better than most, for I was fairly certain that she hadn’t so much as blinked beneath that hood of hers. “You will have to revive it and then destroy it within a mortal vessel.”

“Like Walter?” With her demand the steel-blue of Wren’s eyes became slightly more luminescent than it had been mere seconds prior. Now this was dangerous territory, I could plainly see, and thus I made the undoubtedly wise decision to back out of the exchange. “You’re saying that I have to let that thing wake up again inside Walter and kill him all over again – to kill Walter for a second time?”

“You would be destroying the host form, not the soul of the man who had once inhabited it.” Though she must have meant her words to serve as reassurance Theresa’s admission did little to subdue the dread that was welling within my digestive system. “Two years ago you succeeded only in killing the mortal vessel housing the shadow creature, yet it was something the Crawler had not been prepared to compensate for. Your actions set the creature into a state of dormancy, though it was never truly destroyed. As I said, it cannot be killed by conventional weapons or magic.”

“You’re saying that two years ago I murdered Walter for nothing?! No, I refuse to believe that! Walter said the darkness was gone. He said he could see the light again! Why didn’t _you_ warn us the creature still lived?!” Wren’s patience with her enigmatic advisor was clearly and quite hastily unraveling, while the gypsy seemed as imperturbable as ever – a factor, no doubt, in Wren’s rapidly dwindling tolerance.

“The Crawler bound itself to Walter’s spirit – not his physical body – as a way to control your friend through fear, and so was forced to become inert to survive the death of its host form. There is only one way to destroy it from what I have seen, and it is not with swords or bullets or common spells. At the time of your victory two years passed there was nothing more you could do to vanquish the creature. It was for this reason I would not tell you your future in our last meeting. Had you been warned things would not have progressed as they did, and you might not have had the opportunity to destroy the creature that is open to you now.”

With a reasonable argument such as the one Theresa posed, Wren at last began to regain some of her composure, and with that I began to regain some semblance of wellbeing. “So what’s next? How do we kill it once and for all?”

“You must go to Aurora. There you will find the answer you require.”

“Aurora, eh?” I chimed in, nostalgia taking firm hold of my thoughts. “Sounds a lot like Swifty’s last message to us.”

“What is this weapon?” The queen went on doggedly. “How will I know it when I find it?”

“You will know the weapon only when the time comes to use it. I cannot tell you more than this for in truth I cannot see it.”

And here I forgot the virtues of holding my tongue once more, lost as I was to incredulity of having heard the woman admit to her own limitations. “You don’t know what it is? How do you know this weapon exists if you can’t even see it?” And to my surprise Wren acknowledged the validity of my inquiry with a tilt of her head that wordlessly demanded the gypsy answer my question.

“I can see the events surrounding a great void in my visions. This void will result in the permanent destruction of the creature of darkness. What lies within the void is beyond my knowing, however. It is up to you to seek out and identify it.

“Know this, Hero,” Theresa’s voice took on an ominous quality that caught my attention and held me rapt, “the void only appears when the pair of you are together. Whatever happens, for the time being you must not part company.”

I chuckled at this revelation and shrugged at Wren with false nonchalance when a quip came to mind that I failed to withhold. “So much for our suicide pact, eh pal?”

Cold steel met my gaze and, though no emotion crossed her features, I could feel the chill of her Ice Storm spell in my bones even if not so much as a snowflake danced upon the warm air.

“Right,” I muttered quickly, before she could find the words that I was fairly certain I would not want to hear, “let’s just play that by ear then, shall we?”

To my everlasting relief, my Hero companion abandoned her unborn irritation with me and in quite the responsible fashion returned to the matter at hand. “How long do we have? Can you see that much?”

“Time is of the essence,” the seer replied, for of course she could not be expected to directly proclaim ‘you have two weeks and four days’ or anything quite so edifying; that would have proven useful, after all. “I would advise alternate means of transportation to Aurora.”

I knew what was to come from the way the Hero Queen had gazed pointedly at the seer, her expression thoughtful. I was familiar with this ‘alternate means of transportation’ the old woman referred to; there had once been a time when I had marveled as Wren dematerialized from the room in a flash of white light only to reappear moments later with items not previously on her person. From that point on it had never ceased to draw wonder from me to watch Wren traverse in this fashion, for though she was my friend she was still a Hero, and none in life had fascinated me more than her breed.

I found then that I had become the subject of critical study, as though I were a puzzle that required solving. “Is it possible to take a passenger?” At last I understood her hesitation. Never had I witnessed Wren take another into one of those blinding trips, not without the aid of one of those strange platforms. Theresa held none of our concern, however.

“You need only take hold of the person you wish to travel with and do not let go until you have fully materialized.”

It was here that Wren hesitated dubiously, peering down at my hand as though awkwardly considering how to go about taking it up without actually requesting permission, until I proffered it as I would for a handshake. The leather gauntlet that pressed against my palm tingled with what I could only assume was restrained Will, and for an instant that had nothing to do with the woman before me I wanted nothing more than to never let go. “Brace yourself.” Her tone was laden with warning and straightaway I knew I would not like what was to come.

And with that my world vanished, pulling me faster than thought through a swirling vortex of white light, indiscernible noise and sick-inducing motion.

In my defense, anyone who has ever traveled using the Heroes’ preferred means of transportation will agree with me when I say there is no dishonor or shame in emptying one’s stomach after one’s first encounter with what Wren later called ‘Fast Travel’. Having said that, I feel no compulsion to bear false witness to my resilience in this mode of transit, nor do I deny costing Wren one very lovely and very expensive outfit that day.

  


XXXX

  


When next my eyes beheld the world, it was to the sight of checkered tiles and silk covered walls of a flattering blue. A grand map of Albion occupied the majority of the globular room, as well as a surfeit of unopened gifts, a large basket lined with clean blankets and an elderly gentleman who stared at me, propped as I was against that pedestal map, as though I were no longer a man but a Hobbe.

“Good heavens, it’s him!” The man exclaimed with such shock I could not be certain if it was to my benefit or detriment to be here. “Madam, I hesitate to ask, but-”

“Jasper I need to leave quickly,” Wren’s voice called from beyond an opened doorway further on, “have my travel clothes been laundered?”

The man I remembered to be more an extension of Wren’s family than simply a butler hurried to join his mistress, albeit casting the occasional astonished glance in my general direction as he left me alone within the cozy chamber with nothing to occupy my time and attention but my surroundings. So it was that I felt no reservations about peering about curiously and granted myself the right to a leisurely stroll around the room.

Upon the walls were framed sheets of parchment each having been granted a place of some esteem upon the narrow walls, and on drawing near to one in particular I saw Major Swift’s scrawling print detailing The Hero of Brightwall’s vow to restore honor to the army and appoint the major as the new general once Wren took the throne; a promise she regrettably never had the opportunity to keep. Without thought my hand reached up to touch the nearly indiscernible script, remembering the man who had penned this agreement. Similar parchments hung from other walls; promises the Hero of Brightwall made on her road to becoming Queen. Promises she’d kept, save for this one.

This was her sanctuary, I was at last able to discern. I’d heard Walter speak of this place, and that Jasper fellow during the one time I’d had the pleasure of making his indirect acquaintance. I had always known that Wren had some sort of secret hideaway she would abscond to on occasion; a place where only Walter and Jasper had been, and that she’d brought me here seemed an honor I was hardly worthy of.

It was at that moment that an insistent warmth nudged my hand, one I was familiar with and happy to know once more.

“Hey,” I knelt to rub at the wriggling mass of black and white fur which sported a pink tongue all too eager to greet my cheek, “hey boy! It’s been a while hasn’t it? You been a good boy? What are you doing cooped up here?”

“Her Majesty retired our good Master Pip after an ill fated fight with a pack of balverines over a year ago,” the gentlemen’s gentleman returned with the ruined garments bundled in his arms. “Apparently she decided she’d had enough of losing those she loved most. He hasn’t been allowed to join her in battle since.”

Regardless of if he had intended for his words to strike at me in such a fashion, or if it had been an unknowing slip, the effect was the same.

My Heroic friend had always been there for me, of this I had no doubt. She’d stood at my side during those first unbearable moments after Major Swift’s inglorious murder, worried for me when we became separated upon being shipwrecked on the shores of Aurora, accepted my pathetic attempt to comfort her after Walter’s loss and had viewed my company with not only tolerance but gratitude; something I’d never expected to have from the likes of her. She’d referred to me as her friend on numerous occasions, both publicly and privately.

And then, on what was to be our last night together, I’d momentarily been audacious enough to believe myself worthy enough to sweeten my lips with hers, and had been shocked to find that not only had my actions failed to bring about her revulsion, she’d responded to my attentions with what I daresay had been equal enthusiasm.

It had started simply enough, with a conversation beside Walter’s statue as we watched the sun sink behind the town below. Talk of future plans, half-hearted mocking and a great deal of putting off our final goodbyes lead gradually to fingers that touched without grasping, looks that lingered just a moment beyond prudence and an embrace that, while intended to signify the end of our evening, became only the beginning when at last I acted upon impulses I admit had been long withheld.

To recount the detailed events which followed that first honeyed kiss for you, however, is not something I wish to attempt at this point in my narrative. It is not that I wish to forget that evening, for in fact nothing could be further from the truth. But with those invaluable memories also comes a profound sense of regret for the injustice I placed upon her, and the loss that resulted from it, which no amount of forgiveness could ever erase.

For indeed Wren had counted me as something dearer then a friend that night, and yet where my past romantic consociates in Bloodstone and beyond had received at the very least an expression of gratitude in one form or another and a farewell before departing their company, in the case of Wren I’d left asleep in her bed, without so much as a parting word spoken or scrawled.

  


XXXX

  


When next I laid eyes upon my queen and companion it was to a sight I remembered with fond if bittersweet reminiscence, for more than the finery and ornaments of her stature, I knew Wren for the adventurer she was at heart. With her favorite travel garb of a crimson and gold dyed highwayman’s suit, her chestnut hair tied up in the bun that crowned her head, the courtier’s makeup replaced with a far more modest face paint and her preferred choices in weaponry – the Casanova and the Chickenbane – strapped to her back, she became once more the Hero and friend from my memories.

“I’m not sure where in Aurora we’ll need to go. We should start with Kalin.” My companion announced as she entered the central chamber at last, straightening the buckles of one of her gauntlets and then drawing Chickenbane to ensure it was in proper fighting condition. “Do you need fresh ammunition?”

Though it hardly seemed necessary due to the training in which Major Swift had ingrained within me the habit of never allowing my weapons go unready for combat, I none-the-less pulled first my rifle and then my pistol for inspections, pausing only when I caught notice of the absolute stillness that was now the woman at my side. She was gazing at my pistol as though surprised to see it, and for a moment the reason escaped me.

“Briar’s Blaster,” her voice, I took note, was a whisper of incredulity mixed with something heavier and as of yet unidentified, “you still have it.”

Ah yes, this particular firearm had been a favorite of hers until she had given it to me as a gift immediately after Walter’s funeral, and it was this gun above all others that I’d never had the heart to pack away or tradeoff for a more powerful model. It fit me in some inexplicable way that had nothing to do with the specialty grip and trigger which matched my smaller hands so perfectly. I found holding it gave me a sense of completion no other gun had given me, as though it had been crafted for me even though it had been quite clearly constructed long before my birth.

“Why wouldn’t I? It was a gift.”

With that Wren sniffed disdainfully at my response, though the derision seemed more than a little forced. “No doubt you’ll make some good coin if you sell it while advertising who gave it to you.”

It was at those words that I returned the pistol’s hammer to its rightful position and holstered the weapon once more whilst trying not to take out my irritation on my treasure. “I’d sooner sell my right leg,” I muttered in a tone gruffer than I’d intended and for once decided against giving her the opportunity to respond, mindful that any retort she delivered might pull the worst from me yet again, and that I had no right to inflict my ire upon her. For reasons I could not comprehend Wren’s animosity towards me was diminishing, and I for one was in no hurry to revive it through blatant stupidity. “Ready when you are, pal.” My abrupt end to the conversation brought about a startled blink from the Hero, but nothing more.

“We’ll be Fast Traveling to Aurora.” She said at last, and I took her words for what they were; a warning, and one that was thankfully spoken for my benefit rather than to deter me.

“I’ll be fine.” Though I tried to impart a reassured quality to my statement there was no denying the trepidation I felt at the thought of returning to that plane of instability. “Just be sure keep me aimed away from you; I always was partial to that outfit.”

And it was at that point my heart tripped within my chest, for upon her lips I detected the faintest trace of a smile. Whether it was in response to my words or at my expense didn’t matter in the least at that moment, only that I’d seen it – as I hoped feverishly that I had.

Too dumbfounded to think of something that might draw the smile further from its hiding place and confirm my hopes, I instead held out a hand for her to take. I succeeded in mustering a steady enough voice for a quick “Lead the way,” to which she responded with a tightening grip on my hand as, without further ado, we vanished into the noise and light once again.

  
XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned once in a response to someone’s review that when I write a character’s speech I think of it like finding their ‘rhythm’. In this case every time I switched from Ben’s narrative to his dialogue it’s like a time change (any music aficionados out there?) It can get really tricky in places where he starts talking more and the rhythm changes. Hope I didn’t slip the rhythm too much. ;o)  
> Anyway…  
> Slow start and no action scenes yet, I know, but this is a 13 chapter series. Don’t worry – from here it starts to pick up!


	4. In Which the Circumstances Grow Perilous

I am happy to announce that my second experience with Fast Travel was far less eventful than my first, and what – if any – contents still held by my stomach remained firmly in place.

What lay on the other side of our mystical odyssey, however, was something entirely less fortunate, for it was thereupon apparent that our streak of luck – which is to say the deficiency we had been afflicted with thus far – had followed us across the sea. For no sooner had our boots settled into the searing sands beyond Aurora’s considerable gates then we were set upon by an assemblage of metal encased creatures the likes of which I’d not encountered since their master had sought to stamp out humanity.

“Blighters! How the bloody hell are _they_ here?” My roar was nearly lost to the cacophony of Wren’s immediate and exceedingly volatile reaction upon ascertaining the company in which we found ourselves keeping. Every inch of her form became utterly rigid as threads of blue fire laced over flesh and clothing in intricate patterns no tattooist had yet been able to match, and iridescent wings fanned out at her back whilst she unleashed a volley of Force Push, thrusting the shadow fiends away and borrowing us enough time to extract weapons from holsters and launch a counter attack of our own.

Appendages of spinning death drew near and, with my Swift Irregular planted against my shoulder, I tried desperately to recall the weak points in their armor first divulged to me in that fateful battle two years passed; my aim striking true in rapid succession until at last iron casing was sundered from the ghostly thing within. The one saving grace in fighting against these creatures was the burden their armor placed upon the inhabitants, and how it slowed their progress at least until they drew near enough to rotate their upper extremities, at which time outmaneuvering them became quite impossible. If we could keep them out of melee range we would stand an excellent chance of not being sliced to ribbons by those metal claws, yet therein lay the problem for we found ourselves cornered against the massive doors to Aurora with the odds laying in the creatures’ favor at ten to one.

“They shouldn’t be here,” my Heroic companion announced with incredulity and the accompaniment of her firearm, “not so many – not in broad daylight. They shouldn’t have the strength!” The echo of Chickenbane’s report sounding somewhere behind me was directly superseded by a blossom of such heat it was clear Wren had her hands full; for even by a Hero’s standards we were in dire straits. I could not remember having ever laid eyes on so many shadow spawned creatures in the same area since the invasion of Albion. Chickenbane was tossed to my feet with a curse and only an instant later the sound of swordplay replaced that of gunfire behind me. Turning to address the beasts approaching on our flank I felt a sudden grip of fear take hold of me when a brilliant crimson spatter stained my white sleeve, while I myself had taken no attack.

“Wren?!”

“Just stay where you are!” The response I received was forceful and commanding – that of the woman who had previously waged war against the darkness and emerged victorious. “Cover my back – I’ve got yours!”

Had the implications of what this battle meant not hung in the air like a death knell I undoubtedly would have thrilled at the opportunity to fight alongside my Heroic companion once more, strained relationship or no; it was after all a boyhood fantasy come to life, to fight side by side with a true Hero. Yet the reappearance of these monstrosities and in such quantity as they were signified something far more ominous than a simple surge in the population of the local aggressive wildlife.

“This is just a bad dream,” I murmured to myself wrenching my woefully empty rifle to one side so that I might fire off a round with Briar’s Blaster, finding the pistol not quite up for the task of enacting a one-hit kill, though the shotgun spray Wren had enhanced it with made up for the lack of power by striking multiple targets simultaneously. Another three shots the creature to my immediate fore at last crumbled to nothing more than debris, though its brethren plodded on. “Just a bad bloody dream.”

Lumbering inhuman forms pressed doggedly towards us as gunfire and ringing steel filled our ears and metallic remnants of armor soon littered the sands. Yet it wasn’t enough; we had been two against twenty and with no cover to shelter behind when our weapons ran empty. At last I was forced to halt my offensive in order to reload my weapons, knowing the folly of facing off with these creatures with a sword and a distinct lack of Heroic speed, and for the pause found that four of the share of minions I battled had drawn so close that I had no hope of being able to destroy them all before they overtook us.

Confident in my skills as I may have been, I also understood that I was mortal, and in no particular hurry to face my end at that moment.“Uh, pal? A little help here!?”

An explosion of heat erupted behind my back yet clearly came too late as Wren cried out in pain, her back colliding with mine as she staggered against me and cursed, driving the blade of her sword into the sands beside us. _“Balls!_ Get down!”

Now allow me to confer to you that when the Hero Queen of Albion gives such a command in the midst of battle only an absolute bedlamite would be foolish enough to ignore her, imminent danger or no, and so it was that I was immediately face down in the sand at her feet while the air above my person transformed into a roiling carpet of flames, affirming that Wren had thrown caution to the wind and her craft at every damnable creature surrounding us. Suffocating heat radiated down towards me and I buried my face in the burning sands, throwing my arms over my head having found the alternative far more perilous. In moments the air above my prone form ceased to scorch my skin and all that I could hear was the wind.

Wren was upon me not a moment later, clouting my back and cursing to herself when at last the tang of burning fabric met my grit-clogged nasal passages. “Damn. Are you all right?” Forgoing the customary request for permission, she expeditiously began to prod at the singed fabric of my official vestments and the skin beneath, checking for injury that extended beyond that of my apparel and seemingly found none to be overly concerned about. “Sorry,” she murmured abashedly while helping me to my knees. “I’ll ask Jasper to patch that for you.”

“All’s well. Not to worry.” I assured in the hope of setting her mind at ease, yet her brow furrowed even more deeply at my casual dismissal.

“I have to worry,” she pressed. “It’s so easy for me to hurt those I fight alongside. If I don’t hold back it’s possible I’d end up killing you by accident.”

Her admission, while unnerving, was one I knew to be nothing short of the truth, having witnessed the Hero of Brightwall in combat situations where no ally had been within her striking range. If left to her own devises Wren could unleash such fearsome and indiscriminating attacks that would reduce everything around her to nothing more than ash or wreckage. It occurred to me then that had Theresa not expressly mentioned the importance of my presence Wren would have no doubt left me behind to face this threat alone as had habitually been the case.

Seeking out a distraction from thoughts that came uncomfortably close to recognizing myself more as a burden than an asset, my gaze lifted to our surroundings; the molten remnants of demonic armor which still smoldered, the blackened circle of sand that began three paces from where Wren had made her stand and carried outward for at least fifteen more, and most fixedly to the fantastic gates the sheltered the Auroran populous, now festooned with deep gouges created from metallic gauntlets proving that the fey things we had battled had been attempting to gain access to the city.

My own distress forgotten I routinely began an assessment of the situation, taking notice of the ragged slices to the arm my companion had acquired. Ignoring the consent Wren had previous dismissed in my respect, I reached into the pack at her hip, relieving the bundle of a small roll of bandages of which I wound around her arm in the crude battlefield dressing I myself had donned in my past. Without an irate word at having her belongings plundered or her person handled Wren waited patiently for me to conclude my efforts as she continued to survey what had only moments ago been a battlefield. Being a man of the military, it was not difficult for even one as strategically impaired as me to reach the logical associated conclusion. “The outpost must have fallen. There’s no way they’d have let the demons get this far if it still stood.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Wren nodded. “Come on. We need to check on the city.”

  


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It was with an immediate surge of relief that I noted Aurora’s seemingly unblemished safety once Wren and I were permitted passage through the city’s gates. Having expected to encounter a city in much the same state we had found it in over three years ago I had been trying without much achievement to prepare myself for the same dilapidated buildings and ghost-eyed citizens that had greeted me after washing ashore so long ago. Had it not been for the guards patrolling with weapons drawn and the hushed tones that had replaced boisterous hawker calls and jovial conversation, one could have almost thought the city completely unaware of what was transpiring beyond their gates.

It was to Aurora’s good fortune that Kalin had never been known for her ignorance or lethargy, and was quick enough to not only greet us, but apprise us of the steps she had taken to safeguard her home until help could be summoned – to which she dejectedly admitted she had hoped we’d come to provide. Only the revelation of the nature of our visit drew her away from the appeals for aid she’d been ready to lay at our feet.

“For too long my people suffered at the whim of the darkness, never knowing if the coming night would be our last. And you now tell me that there are those who would wish for it to return, and would inflict this terror upon us yet again?”

“What do the lives of the innocent matter to those that would sell their own souls for power?” Wren had never been one for standing on formalities with any of our former acquaintances; not even Sabine, for all of the eccentric nonsensical airs the man put on; and therefore clearly felt no compulsion to soften the gravity of the situation.

With a resigned shake of her head Kalin let go of her incredulity and set herself to the task at hand. “Have you not been able to locate where these menaces have hidden themselves away?”

“We were hoping that you could tell us.” I contributed, more than a little dejected to hear that our one hope for information had seemingly just turned into a dead end.

“My people have barely set foot outside of their homes in almost two weeks, let alone the city. We are taking no chances this time; during daylight hours we can hear the shadow minions moving about beyond the walls, and at night we hear the death cries of creatures and the clawing of the fiends at our gates. We do not even know how the soldiers at the outpost fare. A few days after the madness returned the two ships docked our port were sent away with news for you of our plight.”

It was during Kalin’s report that Albion’s Hero Queen took up a dark scowl, seemingly more lost to her own thoughts than aware of our colleague’s admission. “Shadelight has to be death to anyone who tries to enter it right now.” She all but murmured to herself, lost as she was to the puzzle laid out before her. “And there are too many other ruins out there to choose from. Theresa said we would find our answer here, but I don’t see how. The people of the city had a hard time simply surviving in recent years. I can’t imagine there would be any information to uncover here.”

The look Wren received in turn from the tribal woman was measured and respectful while letting it be known that the queen had presumed too much. “Although it is not known to outsiders, we are not without an academic heritage, Your Majesty. There was once a time when Aurora housed a vast reliquary of information. Such books and scrolls the likes of which have never been seen since.”

This apparently was enough to pull Wren from her musings for silver eyes snapped up, attentive and fixed solely upon the Auroran. “That’s all well and good, but you said when we had first met that the Crawler appeared five years prior. What good would an ancient library have done for such a new threat?”

“The Crawler appeared five years before our meeting, but it has always been a part of Auroran lore.” Kalin’s words no doubt came as a surprise to Wren, who had quite clearly spent so long assuming the threat to be a recent, unknown quantity. “Long ago my people battled it and learned enough of it to imprison the creature for centuries. What I remember of the stories state we could not locate the weapon in time to destroy, it, and instead had to settle on sealing it away.”

At these words Wren’s eyes alit with more than mere curiosity, and I found myself just as eager to grasp onto that thread of hope. “What happened to this library?”

“Centuries past Aurora was a place of great turmoil and unrest. To avoid the loss of such precious knowledge the entire collection was given over to the custody of the Heroes’ Guild for safe keeping. Unfortunately the Guild fell before the pieces could be reclaimed.”

If knowing of the lost library had brought Wren’s curiosity to life, the mention of who had stewarded the trove last had set that curiosity ablaze. “Jasper! Does Mother’s book mention where the old Heroes’ Guild was?”

It was always disconcerting to watch these outwardly one-sided conversations between Wren and her butler; there were men locked within sanitariums for holding conversations identical in appearance. A short interval later a triumphant smile lit her face, and I became even more unsettled when I realized the old gypsy woman had been right: we’d discovered our answers in Aurora, or at the very least we’d established where our answers were cached.

“Brilliant! Ben, we’re leaving for Millfields at once.” Wren announced, and with that I was surprised, though marginally less, to find my hand caught up willingly by one bearing a gauntlet of Will, the owner of which was clearly intent on drawing me back into that strange realm through which she traveled. As though an afterthought, Wren hesitated and cast an anxious glance back towards our Auroran friend.

“Aurora is part of Albion, Kalin. I won’t let it fall. You know that, don’t you?”

“Your word has always carried tremendous weight here, Your Majesty. We will trust in you to put things right. Might I suggest however, stationing more soldiers within the walls, if only to put your people at ease and secure our walls from within?”

It was quite clear that Wren intended to maintain her promise of Aurora’s protection indefinitely. “Jasper, send word to the castle. The Auroran outpost has probably fallen. I need a brigade dispatched to the city of Aurora as quickly as possible. You can use Pip as your messenger if you like.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” No matter how friendly the two were with one another, Kalin simply could not seem to abandon formalities completely, and bowed respectfully with her gratitude before turning to address me directly. “It is good to see you as well Ben; it has been far too long.” The Auroran woman’s eyes rose to Wren’s upon speaking to me and in that glance I saw something that told me she expected to be admonished for the pleasantries, yet had spoken them regardless. It was clear that Kalin was aware of the queen’s grievance with me, and I had no doubt she was privy to the circumstances of said objection as well. Yet for whatever reason my Auroran friend chose to vouch for me, and for that I found myself grateful; at last I had a true ally – one that walked on two legs and did not press their nose into intimate places by way of greeting.

I’d only enough time to murmur an acknowledgment in turn before Kalin dissolved in a flare of white light and noise, the Hero at my wrist dragging me through that unknown plane before settling us upon the road to Millfields; the home of Bower Lake. Though I knew Wren had it on good authority that this was the final resting place of the Guild of Heroes, I could see nothing to collaborate with her information.

“There’re no ruins here, Wren, just a few broken pillars. Wouldn’t the home of the old Heroes have been a bit… I don’t know… grander?”

Wren seemed to have suspected my words, for she maintained a patience with me that I had not expected. “The guild isn’t above ground; at least not anymore. The entrance is in the center of the lake.”

With this my spirits dipped. “You mean the guild is underwater?” If such was the case it seemed highly unlikely we’d find anything left of merit. Thankfully Wren had a correction readily on-hand.

“Actually, it is under the lake – buried within underground caves. My mother was taken there by Theresa when she was young. It was where she learned she was a Hero.”

I must admit, the thought of setting foot in such hallowed ground had infected me with Wren’s enthusiasm. An entire guild of Heroes; not just one or even a handful, but enough to warrant an entire hall where they could congregate. It was the stuff of legends, and I was going to see what remained of it with my own eyes. Briefly I paused to wonder what might have come of that place had Wren allowed Reaver to pursue his intent of draining the lake and mining its bed before dismissing the consideration for more exciting notions.

After a short jog Wren lead us down to the gazebo which stood upon the small island in the center of the lake, gazing down at its stone flooring silently for the longest time. At long last she muttered a quiet “if you say so” – no doubt in response to an unheard commentary from Jasper – and, lifting a large rock from just beyond the railing, began pummeling the plinth in the center of the structure with jarring blows. Wishing to help I put my back into the task as well, relieved to see that at this hour of the evening no one was close enough to notice what exactly we were up to nor hear the commotion we were raising; not that I believed anyone would have dared to stop the Hero Queen of Albion. It took both of our efforts and a few insistent blasts of her Force Push spell to dislodge the cap of the great pedestal, leaving us both sweat stained and panting by the time we’d displaced it.

Within the hollow base a wooden plank was barely visible in the failing light from beneath layers of black dirt. Beside me Wren’s breath drew up sharp, as no doubt mine did as well, and we worked in earnest now, knowing that we were no longer chasing after a dim hope. Together the Queen of Albion and Albion’s Captain scraped soil aside with our boots and bare hands until at last a large circular hatch, black and green from being buried so many years, had been unearthed. Without pausing to consider the wisdom in opening such an ominous looking door, Wren stooped and tugged at the edges of the hatch with me only a moment behind. Soon enough the door flew open as well, revealing a great black hole beneath and flooding our senses with cold, stale air.

“It’s awfully dark…” My Heroic companion stretched her neck to peer over the hole, tossing a rock into the pit half-heartedly. A moment later a deep splash reverberated from the darkness testifying to the size of the cavern beyond the well’s opening. How such a vast chasm could exist in the midst of one of the deepest lakes in Albion was a mystery to me, yet there was quite clearly air down there, however aged it may be. “It sounds deep enough…” Wren leaned further over the mouth of the well as though hoping her eyesight would be strong enough to penetrate the utter blackness within.

I could only surmise that her reluctance stemmed from the last time she had been trapped in a cave, listening to that dead voice hiss threats and to Walter scream in terror, and could hardly fault her hesitation; were I in her situation I doubt very strongly I would have fared so well. Yet if there was any place in Albion that had the answers we sought, it would be here, and as I had never heard those whispers or screams there were no dark memories to haunt me or hold me back.

“Well, you said your mother came here, right?”

With this I glanced up at Wren, noticing the apprehension in her eyes which did not disappear when she raised her gaze to me and held it. So, being the levelheaded person that I am, I did what any self respecting gentleman would do.

I pitched myself over the low wall surrounding the opening, ignoring the female shriek of alarm that sounded in response to my actions, and allowed the blackness to swallow me up first.

It’s as I said before; I’m an idiot.

  


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_Cold! Bleeding-hell-COLD!!_

I confess, I cannot say with confidence that these were the exact words which raced through my mind when at last my decent ended. Perhaps a few more vulgarities strewn into the lot, but overall the general idea remains the same.

After a fall that drove my insides up into my throat, the water which I plunged into was icier than anything I’d ever known – it astonished me how the pool had not frozen over as had the water in the Chillbreath Caverns, and when my head at last broke the surface I admit to having cried out my intense discomfort, and quite loudly at that; a lapse which resulted in a second panic-ridden cry from above followed by a certain Hero plummeting through the opening herself, her skin already alight with those strange markings that only appeared in battles or while experiencing extreme distress. This left me with no choice but to slosh quickly out of the way or else be pulverized by the falling person, which I did without hesitation, narrowly missing as her solid weight sliced through the water where I had just treaded.

Wren’s glowing silhouette emerged from the depths of the frigid reservoir with far more tact than I, though none the quieter as she paused only long enough to draw breath before the shouting began anew.

“ _Ben?!_ Ben! Where are you!?” One hand lifted and a small fireball ignited upon her palm as she spun round to lay bright eyes upon me; her quick appraisal taking in our surroundings once she had confirmed I was in fact still breathing. “What is it? What happened?”

“Nothing. It was just…” I found it at that moment exceedingly difficult to put one coherent idea together for the purposes of speech, and it was not for the freezing waters that I struggled. The look in my companion’s eyes held me in place, unable to move even my thoughts from her gaze. “The water was cold… I wasn’t expecting… you were worried about me?” Indeed it seemed almost too much to hope for, yet I’d always had a penchant for impracticality and so held onto the small sliver of optimism that she might not completely detest me after all.

With her jaw clenched firmly I watched as her fingers rolled closed over the little ball of fire, dousing the light and obscuring her features in the dim glow that poured down from the opening above our heads. And just when I thought she’d no intentions of acknowledging my remark her voice cut through the soft swishing of our treading water. “Fool. I thought you’d been attacked by something.” The small flame returned to fingers which streamed fresh rivulets of water and once again I had an uninhibited view of a pale face that fell only slightly short of impeccable control.

It would have customarily been in my nature to give such an admission some sort of witty yet sarcastic response boasting about my prowess in whatever situation I currently found myself; this no doubt a direct result of being unfamiliar to such spoken concerns. However in this instance logic reached out from that desolate corner within my mind where I had long since set it aside and I kept my tongue-in-cheek response to myself.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” and there was no need to force sincerity into the apology, for I genuinely regretted putting any more dread into her than she had already suffered. “Thank you… for coming after me.” And once again the flame spluttered out as Wren plunged her leather clad palm into the icy waters, leaving only the less than adequate light of the well above our heads as our sole source of illumination.

“The next time you come up with an idea, do us both a favor and replace your idea with common sense. All right?” She was trying valiantly to force irritation into her voice, yet there was a quaver present that perhaps I would not have picked up if I could have seen her face clearly. No doubt Wren had on one of her ‘Hero Masks’; expressions she wore that could normally distract even the most stout-hearted man from anything but her annoyance – an effect which was currently lost on me in the murky, dim light and of which I was exceedingly grateful.

“Just trying to help.” The response was almost reflexive and undoubtedly the wrong one, so I quickly decided to change the subject before she could begin berating me in earnest. “Would you mind bringing up the light again? We should probably try to find a way out of this ice bath.”

When at last we could view our surroundings once more we were able to locate a small bank where an offshoot cavern lead into further darkness that, with the exception of the narrow opening we had just plummeted through, seemed to be the only way out of this particular cavern. Wren’s light burned brighter as we approached the opening, and I did my best to pretend I had not noticed her apprehension as we entered. After some scavenging we managed to come up with enough tinder to form a proper torch, and Wren transferred her flame to the dusty receptacle, inspecting the gauntlet and blowing small puffs of air onto her hand as though to sooth away a burn. It had not occurred to me that holding a flame might cause her discomfort, though I’d witnessed her perform that act while waiting for a foe to come into range various times in the past.

Our subterranean journey was far less impressive than what had been anticipated, as what must have been hours of traversing through corridors no more notable than any other cavern, uncovered nothing more hostile than the sparks of our torch, and met with man-made articles no more awe inspiring than a few crumbling bookshelves and newer makeshift shaft supports. Growing more dejected with every corner we rounded we pressed on, at last passing through an entryway no different than anything we’d encountered thus far and found that in crossing that threshold we’d stepped through the portal between fantasy and fact.

Above us the now smoothly polished carved ceiling curved upwards to heights that should not conceivably be able to exist beneath Millfields; its grandiose scale lending to the impression that either we’d fallen further than I had first thought or perhaps we now stood beneath one of the nearby mountains rather than the outskirts of the town. Murals larger than the house I had grown up in decorated the walls of this domed chamber, and while many were damaged beyond recognition, from the few I could still clearly see they appeared to depict the life of a seemingly significant man who had grown to be a Hero as well as king.

In the center of the hall, upon a round platform that could also hold a small house, were dozens of shelves arranged around the edges of the raised floor, dusty but plainly newer than the furnishings we had passed. Equally modern tables, chairs, lamps, a basket much like the one Pip slept in, and various other furnishings told us that this place had been used mere decades ago, yet these things were not what captivated our attention so completely.

What drew our attention were the shelves, for upon them stood row upon row of ancient books, neatly arranged and in some cases clearly restored with great care. Hundreds of ancient volumes, all pulled from those dilapidated shelves we had passed on our way to this place.

The remains of the lost Heroes’ Guild library. What were the odds that any of these books were the ones we needed?

Beside me Wren’s whisper broke the silence at last. “Jasper, I’ll need you to come down here.”

  


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Upon a quick yet daunting estimate of the number of tomes from Jasper it was decided that we three were quite clearly in over our heads and therefore, while Jasper and I began the arduous review of each and every book within the fresco dome, Wren took it upon herself to go in search of ‘reinforcements’ as she had put it; returning with the Brightwall Librarian, Samuel, and an odd little man also from Brightwall called Saul, who all but began salivating upon laying eyes on the trove. Although I knew Samuel well, my confidence that these two additions would be sufficient to our needs was sorely lacking, only to be bolstered when the two scholarly men began instructing us on the quickest way to search out specific information from such a vast source of material. Cataloguing, they called it; a term of which I only dimly recalled from my days spent under Samuel’s eager yet ultimately forgettable tutelage.

I will not bore you with the details of the days we spent in that dome, and even more to the point I will not bore myself attempting to relive it for you. As I stated previously, I was never one to be considered scholarly, and the days spent in the ancient dome gave me a renewed and unappreciated understanding of tedium. It appeared that whatever patience I had harbored for such mundane work ended with the onset of manhood and my discovered affinity for all things associated with risk.

Thus it was that after days of strained eyes, paper cuts and more dusty sneezing fits than I can recall, that I turned a page of a particular tome I had been reviewing and nearly tossed the book from me with a start.

It was doubtless that I had cried out in alarm, because immediately Wren dropped her own study material to draw up beside me, for I was too engrossed in what had been painstakingly drawn onto the pages with charcoal sticks to release the book to her. It was a face, but that was all I could be certain of, for although it had two eyes above a single mouth of sorts there was nothing human in its qualities, nor in the miniature version that seemed to have attached itself to the first. Littering the background of the portrait were dozens of dark silhouettes, each defined as a sentient being only by the blank points in the parchment meant to represent eyes. Wren’s breath shuddered in my ear.

“The Crawler,” her whisper was faint yet had clearly been unmistakable from the way the others crowded in to peer over my shoulders as well.

I cringed. Wren’s newfound apprehension of dark places seemed to hold a validity I could not deny her, having only caught the briefest of glances of the thing before it disappeared down Walter’s gullet during our last battle.

“That is what you defeated two years ago, Your Majesty?” Samuel’s voice quavered fearfully from behind Jasper. “Good heavens, I-”

“Samuel, I need you to read this book now. Please.” Wren took the book from my numb fingers carefully and passed it back to the librarian who was undeniably the swiftest reader of those in attendance, all the while holding the page open to that terrifying picture. “Look for any mention of the weapon needed to destroy it.”

“A weapon? I don’t understand, that seems hardly necessary when it’s already-”

With far more patience than I’d thought she’d be capable of now that the information was so close at hand, Wren pushed the book towards him once again. “Please Samuel.” With a nearly spasmodic nod in which the old librarian at last understood the nature of his monarch’s request, Samuel turned to the first page, carefully reading through the text while we remaining researches returned to the task of marking pages in the other books, in case the one Samuel studied did not have what we needed.

It was a short time later as utter and complete silence reigned within our makeshift study hall that a brilliant flash of non-light illuminated the chamber and sent Saul skittering under the nearby table like a frightened dog; and when the glare subsided I wasn’t at all surprised to find the blind gypsy standing before us. I was however disturbed to note that not only was Wren now standing rather than kneeling upon the stone floor, she had somehow moved to the other side of the platform. Distantly I recalled Wren mentioning that it was not uncommon for Theresa to appear before the Hero Queen, and often times when that occurred time ceased to move. This was one aspect of the Heroes I had never expected, nor could I bring myself to appreciate. I felt my skin crawl at the idea that there were those capable of rendering me immobile and unable to act in my own defense while they themselves retained full awareness and ability to act both around me and upon me, if they so decided.

A quick glance over her shoulder towards the lot of us and Wren nodded to herself as though satisfied with some unspoken result. “Good. Now,” she sighed in a manner that was almost weary and returned her attention to her former mentor, “just tell us what you know. Playing detective to find information you already have will just waste more time.”

If the change in Wren’s demeanor did anything to soften or harden the blind woman’s heart I for one could not tell, for she seemed as perpetually devoid of emotion as the stone statues standing within the castle gardens.

“Very well.” Theresa complied without rancor or hesitation. “You should know that the Crawler cannot survive in the daylight without a host form to inhabit, even with its ability to block out the sun for a time.”

“How is that true?” Wren folded her arms thoughtfully beneath her breast as she pondered the implications. “It took the creature a full year to reach Albion’s shores.”

“It took the Darkness a full year to reach Albion,” Theresa corrected without emotion. “The Crawler had been within our borders the entire time, hidden within the body of Sir Walter Beck. What you saw entering Walter was the Darkness the creature had called to it. Once within a host, the Crawler is nearly impossible to extract. The Aurorans were no more capable to removing the Crawler from your friend than they were of removing it from their lands. Within a host body, the creature not only gains the advantage of being able to move about in the daylight, but is also limited by the strengths and capabilities of its host.”

“Meaning the thing can’t do much more damage than Walter could have alive?” While it appeared as though this should have been a boon to our cause, Wren’s dark expression did not ease, and neither did the stress I could feel within my limbs.

“In part, yes.” The far-seer continued. “You have already witnessed the extent of its abilities while it resides in Walter. Beyond a few additional abilities it was able to utilize, Walter’s limitations became those of the Crawler. Using any more power than the host was capable of in life would destroy the vessel.”

The unpleasant tingle flared up along my spine once more; the sensation leaving me on edge and wishing there was something nearby to shoot if only to release the pressure of this unknown danger. “Why do I get the feeling the other shoe is about to drop?”

“The cult is also aware of these limitations,” the gypsy went on in a implacably cool manner which gave me ample cause to wonder how concerned she truly was with the peril we seemed to face, “and they have devised a way to greatly strengthen the Crawler once they revive it. They will transfer the creature to a new host; one whose power in life far exceeded that of anyone else.”

“One whose power _in life_?” Samuel, never one to sit idly by while there was a mystery to be puzzled out, at last gave up his self-preserving silence in favor of taking part in solving the unknown. “The new host is dead?”

It was as Wren’s audible gasp filled the chamber that the thought struck me, and I found myself on my feet; the warning tingle immediately flared out to my legs, my hands, and leaving me with the intense desire to move, to fight, to do anything but stand here and talk. My fingers closed around the grip of my pistol so tightly the flow of blood to them was all but cut off, save for my carefully perched trigger finger, though I am certain I do not recall ever drawing the weapon.

“Wren’s mother.” I recall having heard the answer announced flatly into the air and realizing with some distant surprise that it had been my voice. “They’re going to put the thing into the Old Hero Queen.” Somewhere off to one side I have the faintest memory of the sound of a shattering teacup and what could have been a prayer though none among us were devout followers of the Light; the religion having fallen out of popularity in recent decades.

“And if that happens,” Theresa made no argument to the contrary as I had furtively hoped she might, “it will gain the strengths and skills of the old Hero, as well as the ability to use its more powerful maneuvers it had been unable to utilize while residing within Walter.”

“She…” Wren appeared to be lost to shock, her unnaturally pale complexion draining to something that seemed practically lifeless, “she was so powerful. Even now I remember…”

“If you are of the mindset that you could not defeat one as powerful as your mother, you are correct. It is no secret that with every generation that passes the new Heroes are dwindling in number and power. Your mother was able to utilize magic without the need of a gauntlet, and her ability to strengthen her physical power and speed surpassed yours. And where her generation had four known Heroes, at present there is only you left to defend Albion.”

“So you’re telling us that unless we can keep those bastards from putting the Crawler into Wren’s mother, we’re as good as dead.” It seemed a fairly simple situation, and yet I was familiar enough with the workings of this strange old woman to know that nothing about her was ever simple. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch, Captain Finn,” in every memory I possessed of the woman, not once did I recall her every having addressed me directly, and when those pearly white eyes turned upon me I couldn’t help but believe she could see me with a deeper clarity than eyes alone would be capable of, “is that half of your battle is already lost.”

Beside me Wren startled visibly, as I have no doubt I did as well. “What?”

In this Theresa at last seemed to understand that her words were about to shatter what little confidence we had left, for her voice softened to something that could have almost been considered sympathetic. “In their efforts to safeguard Walter’s tomb and obey your direct orders, your royal guards could spare no additional men to protect your mother when they were suddenly attacked just before dawn this morning. The Old Hero Queen’s body now lies in the hands of the Crawler’s worshipers.”

Standing beside Wren, witnessing the emotions that crossed her features in reaction to the old gypsy’s words, I actually found myself feeling some measure of pity for the poor blighters.

Wren would see them suffer before she allowed them the mercy of death – of this I had no doubt.

  
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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote some portions because Ben’s written dialogue wasn’t flowing right. Seven thousand words needs a bit more proofing than three thousand. ;o) Anyway, I promised some action and here we go. Hope it works well – I’d never written action scenes in so formal a context before. New things are fun – and challenging!!


	5. In Which the Author Finds Forgiveness Insufferable

It was abundantly clear to Wren and I that our time for research had come to a premature end, for every moment that we held up with our ancient books and scriptures was one in which our enemy was free to act without resistance. And so we left Jasper and the Brightwall scholars with the arduous task of piecing together the clues from the Auroran texts while we took to the far more satisfying chore of hunting down offending heads to lop off; Wren being temporarily blinded by the need for vengeance while I simply needed a way to abate the tingle that had once more taken up residence within my spine.

Fast Travel to Bowerstone Castle seemed almost blasé in comparison to learning of the danger we faced, and I found myself able to move with a purpose the moment my boots met with the manicured lawns of the gardens. Immediately we were set upon by the same two lieutenants I had encountered during my last visit to the castle, both of whom looked bedraggled and none too energetic.

“Your Majesty,” the taller bloke panted with a stiff bow, and it was then that I noticed the bloody tear to his jacket along his ribcage, “we’ve staved off the invasion of Sir Walter’s tomb, but I must inf-”

“I know,” our Hero Queen interrupted in what Walter and I had once jokingly deemed her ‘working voice’ which she adapted while holding court or addressing folk in the capacity of Hero or Queen. “They took my mother’s casket.”

“Not the casket, Majesty,” the soldier bobbed again, “just her body.” Enraged light flared briefly from the markings upon Wren’s skin and I was quite surprised though equally so relieved to see that neither of the men shied away; it seemed a true fight had delivered onto these soldiers something they had desperately needed – a backbone for each. “Had I sent men to stop the theft we would have lost our hold on Sir Walter.” The taller of the two went on, lifting his chin as though preparing to accept a currently unknown form punishment for his failure. “It was clear we had to choose between the two, and so I made the decision. I am prepared to face whatever consequences you deem appropriate.”

“Good.” Wren affirmed with little to no tolerance for delay, it appeared, resulting in the compulsive need rising within me to defend these two men until she continued with, “Lieutenant Turner, you are herby promoted to the rank of Captain for your exemplary judgment and are subsequently assigned to guarding the body of Sir Walter Beck. This is imperative, Captain, for the entity known as the Crawler is still imprisoned within.”

I might have thought the newly promoted Captain Turner had thereupon bled out from the wound at his side had the ground at his feet not remained pristinely unstained, for he staggered slightly as the parlor drained from his features.

“The Craw-” the man corrected his slight break in propriety with a guttural clearing of his throat followed then by straightening, saluting and bowing once more. “Yes Your Majesty. Thank you Your Majesty. As your captain, ma’am, I must report that we took casualties during the fight, and I find myself short of hands. I request reinforcements to replace the able bodies I lost during the last invasion.”

“Granted. I will call Captain Morris and the Swift Brigade back from clearing up the balverine packs straying out from Silverpines. They will support you to their fullest, but Captain Morris will maintain command over his men and will answer to none but me, make no mistake.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“The Swift Brigade?” The oddest tightening in my chest responded to that familiar name. My second family; it had never occurred to me that they would still be intact. Wren seemed to sense my reaction, for I caught her glancing at me from the corner of her eye.

“It would have been a waste to break up such a well oiled machine. They were trained by the best; I knew I could count on them.” It was here that she hesitated, as though debating on whether or not to further brief me on the status of my former unit. Then, for reasons still unknown to me this day, she continued. “Morris tried to refuse the position, you know; they all agreed it should be your command. I hope you won’t mind having to wait to make that choice until after our work together is accomplished.”

Another failure I had never anticipated. Swifty’s men had been intensely loyal to the major, who had managed through no small effort to forge strong ties of comradery between the men in his charge. Despite the trust and responsibility I’d been openly given by Swift I’d never considered the men’s loyalty might have extended to me through association. And here Wren was, making it sound as though my dereliction to my post had nothing to do with my sabbatical and everything to do with my first and foremost duty to the crown.

Thankfully Wren either had not noticed the onset of my melancholy or decided that we’d wasted enough time talking, for she was moving off towards her mother’s vault without further commands, and remained silent until we reached the catacombs.

Within the warm glow of candles and torchlight two golden caskets flanked a massive statue overshadowing a stairway to caves beyond; both containers having been opened and the coverings over the bodies within removed – though only one corpse remained and had been left virtually untouched, the skeletal face grinning up at us from within its resting place. What struck me as strange was how small the body was; the size of the tomb implied someone of great stature would have been housed within.

“Aunt Rose,” Wren’s voice was softer than it had been back in the gardens, and she reached down to pull the shroud over the girl as though tucking her into bed for the night. “Mother’s older sister; murdered in front of my mother when they were children. Aunt Rose all but raised my mother when they lived on the streets, you know. It took years, but mother eventually discovered where the murderer hid the body and brought her here – but only after killing the bastard.”

Of course there would not have been a husband to bury beside the old queen. It was common knowledge that Logan and Wren’s father, a greedy man by the name of Lord Eugene who had been born into Bowerstone’s highest nobility, had divorced the Hero Queen after years of questionable behavior on his part. Dalliances and gambling marred his reputation after a time, though nothing of an outright illegal nature could ever be tied directly to the man. There had been very few blemishes to the Old Hero Queen’s reputation, but I remember my mother gossiping with the other women of Gunk when the old queen’s husband unexpectedly ended the marriage. That Eugene had drained a fair portion of the coffers and never returned to see his children had been a scandal the old queen had never been able to live down, and she’d never attempted to marry again after that, despite the abundance of willing candidates.

Lost to thought for an extended interval in which I could only assume she had spent reflecting upon her family history, Wren next turned to me with such a look of pain in her eyes I wondered what she had suddenly recalled to have caused such suffering. “I’m sorry Ben. I should never have overreacted the way I did.”

My derisive humor could not be contained, even in the face of self destruction, and I found the words escaping, dulled only by the hushed quality of my voice in this sacred place. “You? Overreact? Bah! Nonsense!”

“No, I mean it.” She pressed on, leaving me with the distinct feeling that there was more to her protests than I’d first surmised. “I hated you Ben, or at least I wanted to. In truth I expected more from you than you’d ever given to any woman, all because I thought… No. What I thought doesn’t matter. You lost everyone you ever loved, and so you spent your latter years holding people at arm’s length. I knew this; you never made a secret of it. It was arrogant of me to think that I should be the exception.”

And so I learned exactly what had preoccupied my companion’s thoughts so completely, and it came to mind all too quickly that this was not how I wanted to earn her forgiveness. She was attempting to accept that I cared nothing for her, when nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Now hold on just a second,” I felt myself rapidly growing confused and not a little annoyed with the sudden and inexplicable turn in events, no matter that they were at last turning in my favor. “You’re right to think you deserved better. If I’d wanted to distance myself from you I should have left well enough alone, instead of... ” I found it impossible to utter the words and give name to the grievous wrong I had committed against her – an infringement she was attempting to excuse away for my benefit I realized, much to my disgust. “Queens don’t carry on like that, Wren. Neither do Heroes.”

“Had much experience with conversing with both types, have you?” She was making an attempt at levity, albeit a poor one, but for once I could not bring myself to rise to her banter.

I chose not to answer, having barely managed to swallow my ire with her for being so foolishly self-deprecating or with myself for being so selfishly weak in ways I’d never before considered. Instead I left the casket of Wren’s child aunt at that moment and followed the footprints in the thin layer of dust upon the floor that lead into the caverns beneath the statue. Never mind that I was suddenly being granted the absolution I had been chasing since being reunited with my estranged friend so harshly – if it was to come at the expense of her sense of worth I decided then and there that I wanted no part of it.

A freshly fallen body in the path caught my attention and, attempting to lead myself from my current brooding, I bent to examine the man; the tattoo upon his hand easily identified him as a follower of the strange religious sect we hunted. Yet it wasn’t the bullet wounds at his shoulder and arm that had killed him, nor had the great gaping tear at his back. Half of his throat had been torn out; I’d seen enough wounds of this nature to know what it was that had killed the man, and was reaching for Briar’s Blaster before Chickenbane announced loudly that we were not alone in the cave.

Yet I’d been distracted by my thoughts, and the tingling warning in my spine had been coming on so frequently of late that to my discredit I’d all but ignored it in this place. And so it was that I found myself sprawled on my stomach, a solid weight pressing into my shoulders as scorching breath and saliva met my neck. I waited for the killing teeth, knowing I’d never raise my pistol in time while at the same moment pondering the ignoble death that was upon me, when my assailant was violently dislodged from my person. I rolled onto my back without hesitation, raising my gun to see Wren behind me, her elbows hooked beneath the heavily muscled arms of a balverine, Will markings burning brightly in the murky cavern light, while her captive screamed and gnashed ferocious teeth at her straining throat. Beyond her back more of the monstrosities were coming, yet I had not enough time to count their numbers.

I immediately emptied the contents of my pistol into the beast’s face, splattering Wren in its blood and brain matter and was on my feet again, pressing my back to hers as I worked to reload my weapon whilst she held our attackers at bay with fire and bullets; her voice nearly obliterated by the sounds of gunfire at my back.

“Balls! Ben are you alright?”

“Oh yeah,” I growled, “I’m just bloody fantastic! How about you?”

“Never been better!” The cavern flared a brilliant orange as she hurtled a massive fireball, and somewhere before her a balverine howled in agony. “You about done back there?”

“Oh, you know, just admiring the view!” With more aggression than prudent, I thrust the last bullet into the chambers and sped away from the Hero’s back, pulling my trusty Swift Irregular free and adding to the upheaval of battle with cracking reports as I unloaded rifle and pistol into two of my attackers; the third thrown from the nearby precipice by Wren’s Force Push spell, though not before it ripped a burning gash into my shoulder blade. “Looks to me like Morris missed a few!”

“Less talking, more shooting!” Surrounded, Albion’s queen slapped a palm into the ground at her feet, throwing the creatures in every direction with the all-encompassing variety of Force Push that stopped just shy of where I made my stand, yet more of the fur covered fiends came in quickly to take their place; there were too many to escape this place unscathed and Wren’s knees buckled when, overrun, she took the full force of a balverine’s claws, twisting to spare her throat and taking great tears to her arm and chest instead.

I’ve never been the naive sort, and had always been aware that Wren had been injured during previous battles. I recall with vivid clarity discovering during our fateful affair a particularly frightening scar just beneath her left breast that spoke of how close Albion had come once to losing its last remaining Hero. Yet seeing the marks of old battles on her skin and watching her fall to the ground in person were two altogether different things, and I admit that in this case I panicked; bellowing out her name and launching bullets at anything which moved in her vicinity. With the final hail of gunfire, and her attackers’ attention now drawn to me, I reached for my ammunition belt and found it missing from my chest, at last having to resort to the sword at my back, slicing at the creatures madly while trying to avoid their piercing, shredding reach only just enough to keep them focused on pursuing me.

“Come on you blighted bags of fleas! Fresh meat this way!” I taunted loudly while backing away from where Wren had dropped, knowing well that while the words themselves would be lost on their animal minds the concept would reach them. “Wren!? You might want to think about getting up now!”

I was able to at last get an accurate count of my enemies’ number, for at present all eight of the beasts circled me, snarling and lashing out with their bloodied nails and rank smelling muzzles, while I was forced to disregard the killing claws in favor of warding off those contaminated teeth which would have me begging for death if they found my flesh. As the balverines took turns slicing ragged tears into my arms and torso I fought back with everything I could spare; one received the edge of my blade across its throat, while another must have lost an eye to the heel of my boot when it thought to take me out at my knees. A third balverine swallowed my blade as it lunged and fell back impaled, wrenching the blood slicked pommel from my grasp.

“Bloody hell.” Five more of the upright mongrels remained and, hurriedly bleeding out onto the cavern floor, I had neither sword nor firearm to defend what little life I had left.

Before my eyes one of the monster’s heads exploded in a spray of bone and flesh, its body tumbling away granting me a clear view of a brightly glowing Wren kneeling upon the stone not twenty paces away with my Swift Irregular planted firmly against her good shoulder. The torn leather strap of my ammunition belt was clamped firmly between her teeth while her damaged arm hung awkwardly as she fumbled for bullets from one of the belt pouches.

A follow through shot from my pilfered rifle blew a ragged hole through the chest of the next closest animal. Unsteady glowing fingers reloaded the weapon and Will markings flared anew as two more of the animals fell before her flourish, having no time to finish redirecting their murderous intent and save their lives.

The final beast must have known its doom was close at hand for the balverine leapt impossibly high into the air, its claws scrambling for purchase on the rock wall above our heads.

“And where do you think you’re going, you great walking hairball?” I asked and felt a surge of relief when the ringing crack behind me signaled the end of our impromptu struggle. I stepped back and watched the howling mass of limbs break upon the rocks before me, falling silent on impact. “Well, that went well, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh just smashingly.” the Hero Queen murmured at my back and I returned to her side, staggering to my knees and accepting a vial of noxious red liquid that tasted like sweat, resembled congealing blood, yet patched up wounds better than any bandages or sutures; that is if one could afford the potions, outlandishly priced as they’d become. Wren grimaced after knocking back a vial of her own and rotated her shoulder gingerly as it knit up as if by magic. “Lovely job you did back there by the way, tricking the balverines into thinking you were a twit when you let them toss you down onto your face like that.” There was no outright annoyance in her voice, though previous experience had taught me Wren could be decidedly deceptive when it came to her anger, and given my pre-balverine state of mind I was at the moment none too particular about what sort of reaction I elicited.

“You know me,” I mumbled, “I’ve never been big on the whole ‘looking intelligent’ act. And who needs brains when you have a really big gun, right?”

And it was then that I heard something I had wondered if I would ever bring about in her again: Wren’s laughter, nearly inaudible beneath her breath but still clear enough at such close proximity, which then lead into something even more amazing – an affectionate old taunt I’d last heard beneath Walter’s statue over two years prior. With a shake of her head my old friend smiled ruefully and muttered for my ears alone. “Shut up, Ben.”

There was no being cross with such a gesture I realized all too late, and could not hold back the seditious grin which broke free despite my better judgment, deciding that there would be time enough to set her straight on our previous disagreement later.

“Whatever you say, pal.”

  


XXXX

  


According to Wren, there were only two means by which our culprits could have easily departed from the catacombs; the closest exit being one of the strange Hero platforms she referred to as a Cullis Gate. As it was all but guaranteed that the thieves could not activate the gate which lead straight into the heart of her Sanctuary this left only the Bowerstone Industrial Sewers in which to abscond with her mother’s body.

At last we reached the large grate which swung open to reveal one of Industrial’s canals and, not to our surprise, a pair of heavily armed and even more heavily muscled men whose villager garb did little to disguise the fighter’s glint in both of their gazes. Former members of the resistance, of this I had no doubt, for each were bowing to Wren with the stiff movements of men not quite accustomed to dealing with those of stature or proper refinement.

“Page said you’d probably come this way,” one of the men rumbled. “She said to relay to you that she’s still searchin’ but from what she can see the trail’s already cold. Beggin’ your pardon, Your Majesty, but you look like you just took a nasty turn.”

With a dismissive flick of her wrist, Wren brushed off the spoken concern, shaking her head ruefully at the news. “Leave it to Page to know exactly what’s going on in her town,” the Hero Queen’s compliment of the new mayor’s keen sense of observation was not without ire though, for with the news we’d effectively lost all hope of finding our quarry.

“If Your Majesty would like, I can take you to her,” the first man offered and with a silent nod clearly ordered his fellow to remain on guard at our exit. “Beggin’ your pardon, but I think you’ll still manage to surprise her. Page knew you’d come, but I don’t think she’d planned to see The Captain with you.”

“It was Captain Finn who brought this danger to my attention. Without him I believe we would all be in far greater danger.”

“Be that as it may, I daresay The Captain won’t receive as warm a welcome as you. Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but since the moment you stepped off the docks some weeks ago Page has been spittin’ scattershot whenever she hears your name – and given how popular you are now she’s been spittin’ too often for our taste.”

It was here that I once again was able to piece together the facts without having been outright told.

“Page knows, I take it?” It had not been necessary to direct my question to my companion specifically, nor to elaborate as to what it was Page had knowledge of; Wren knew exactly what it was I was asking of her.

“Yes.”

And there it was, and I found myself suddenly almost as apprehensive as I had been standing before the throne room doors all those weeks ago.

And yet, when we had crossed the town and reentered the sewers at another hatch, the woman we at last found seemed more shocked than angered at my presence, gazing wide eyed at me before turning that same stunned gaze upon her queen.

“He’s here?” She asked in amazement, completely foregoing any form of a proper greeting for her queen. “With you? I don’t understand. What-”

“There will be time for all that later, Page,” Wren blurted hurriedly to my relief, for Page’s tirades were all too quick in coming on, and once started they were not easily quelled by anyone. “First we have something important to discuss.”

Truth be told, I had never seen Page look quite so confounded – the woman wore confidence in much the same way a noblewoman wore her powdered wigs. Clearly Page was expecting something closer to what I had encountered in the throne room, though the woman mustered herself better than any soldier I’d ever served with.

“All right,” she responded with a bracing nod and a straightening of her spine. “I’m listening. Let’s have it.”

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so let me go on record as saying that my history for marriages in the Fable franchise sucks. In the second game my husband left me (though in the game he took the kid) and it took a while for the other NPCs to stop whispering behind my character’s back and muttering rude things at her. I quit trying to marry her off after a while. Ugly, ungrateful jerks… *sniff*  
> And when I beat the second game I chose the good ending, and gave up the chance to get my loved ones back to save the innocents. So Rose remained dead. (And I would have found her and given her a proper burial if I were Sparrow.)  
> Thus an explanation for the two tombs in the catacombs came to me.


	6. In Which Words Cut Deeper than Steel

No doubt whatever ire Page had felt towards my previous misuse of our companion and queen was quickly enough swept aside, if not abolished entirely, at the prospect of the renewed threat that lay before us, for that fearsome glare she had directed at me dissipated with Wren’s telling of how such perilous news had been brought to light. This seemed to have been precisely what Page required to fill in the lapses in the information provided to her, for she readily offered up her own findings upon hearing ours.

“I’ve had no reports of unusual activity at the docks.” She conferred once Wren’s recount had concluded. “And if they need Walter as badly as you say I can’t imagine they’d leave without him.”

“They’d need a hell of a lot more than a night raid to get him out now,” I groused without reservation, recalling that the Swift Brigade would soon be securing the castle if they were not already. Wren’s prior assessment of Major Swift’s chosen few, while prideful, was also justified, as was my opinion of my former fellows. The men of the Swift Brigade had proven diligently that they could not only hold a fort against near constant threat without fail, they could bring the battle to their foes if called upon to do so as they had that fateful day the Crawler had breached Albion’s borders and met its supposed doom.

Despite my steadfast confidence in those brave few elite, there was still the matter of decimating the cult where they lived, and for that cause Wren and I were on our own, a fact I felt it necessary to bring once more to light. If our encounters before Albion’s gates and within the catacombs had been any indication of our capabilities Wren and I were going to require assistance; for as long as Wren felt it necessary to exercise restraint in the interest of my wellbeing, the pair of us would be no match for what lie ahead. It was then with a swell of relief that I witnessed as Bowerstone’s beloved mayor took note of our predicament and announced her intentions to accompany us, only to be promptly thwarted by Wren’s gainsay.

“I need you here, Page.” The queen announced firmly. “I need someone with connections; someone who can keep an ear to the ground and her eyes to the shadows. I need you to raise the alarm if they breach our line. And someone has to stay behind to safeguard the people if things take a turn.”

Though Wren’s instructions were sensible and conscientious of her duty to the kingdom I could not help but to point out the obvious flaws to her plan, as they could only result in our spectacular failure. “I’ll tell you, pal, I’ve never doubted your abilities before. But you’re talking two against an army. I can’t help but feel those odds are just slightly stacked against us.”

If my argument raised any rankle in the queen she did an admirable job of hiding it. “We don’t know their numbers, Ben.” She explained dutifully. “We don’t know _anything_ ; short of their need for my mother and Walter and that they managed to best my guards once. Right now our best offense is one that can’t be seen. We have one advantage – Theresa’s warnings. With her direction, indistinct as it may be, we at least have a chance at finding this mysterious weapon that can slay the Crawler. But if we go traipsing about with a large gathering we’ll stand absolutely no chance of going unnoticed.”

Subterfuge admittedly was a tactic I’d never before successfully carried out, and yet Wren seemed to have enough confidence in her plan and my ability to not foil it that I was left no alternative but to give up my protests. “Fine then. We’ll do things your way. But if we encounter some bloodthirsty army bent on our destruction I’m leaving it up to you to come up with a plausible cover story. I’ll just get tongue tied and start shooting them like the last time.”

Despite the smirk my ribbing earned from my fair-skinned companion, Page’s previous incredulity at my reappearance and the easy nature Wren and I were reestablishing returned. With a piercing glare from Page, Wren’s mirth withered and she sighed somewhat reluctantly.

“Ben I think you need to step outside for a moment,” the more congenial of my companions murmured, her gaze clearly and quite pointedly avoiding mine; “women’s talk.”

“You know I have it on good authority that when women talk in secret it usually revolves around men,” I volunteered, suspecting that my faltering honor was about to take an unseen and possibly undefended blow. “So let me save you the guess work and answer your questions myself, alright?”

“Out.” Page’s order was hard as steel if not loud, and suddenly things like bruised honor or unknown secrets seemed insignificant to me. I had witnessed firsthand the onset of Page’s temper in the past and had no desire to attract her irritation further as it would be at the cost of my well-being if I remained.

“Right then. Have your women’s talk. But don’t think for one second I’ll just walk away from this fight because of some idiotic blunder I made.”

“No one’s asking you to, Ben. Now give us a minute. We won’t be long.”

And as it was Wren asking me to leave and not Page ordering me out – or so I tried to convince myself – I exited the sewers and returned to the fading daylight, suddenly as eager to be quit of the mayor as I had been desperate for her support not less than an hour before.

Despite Wren’s promise that they would only be a moment, dark had fallen before the door at my back creaked open and torchlight spilled forth, announcing Wren and Page’s reemergence, and even in the flickering glow of the torches I could see whatever they had discussed had Wren’s parlor even more blanched than usual.

“Marco, Her Majesty and the Captain will be staying in the Plum House. See to their needs, whatever they may be. They’ll be leaving in the morning.”

“We’re staying?” In response to my mild surprise at Page’s courteous use of my title and the news of our delayed departure Wren nodded, somewhat pulling herself from her partial daze.

“We haven’t slept a full night since our journey to Theresa’s spire, and I could do with a hot bath and a soft mattress. We’ll stay here tonight in case they attempt to smuggle my mother out under the cover of darkness.

“Tomorrow, you and I are going back to Aurora to find the bastards where they live.”

  


XXXX

  


In the two hours that had passed since our arrival at Plum House, a small but stately residence which had been renovated for the purposes of hosting visiting officialsof boarding about a boisterous taproom who did not relish the prospect of boarding above a boisterous taproom, Wren had spoken not a single word beyond agreeing to take her turn at the bath first and a murmured thanks for the bowl of stew she had failed to touch. With a steadily increasing sense of trepidation I naturally made pathetic attempts at conversation and humor before retreating to a task I held little love for but more than sufficient need: the darning of our garments.

Having had no daughters to pass down her knowledge, my mother had chosen to school me in the art of needlework; a skill that, while embarrassing to disclose to my peers, had ultimately preserved my precious uniform and the vestments of a great many comrades while at the same time placing a few additional coins in my pocket. In no time at all Wren’s highwayman garb was mended, a few fresh darts strategically placed to conceal the worst of the damage and lending the fabric a more formfitting appearance. Not my worst work to be certain, though the reaction it elicited was lukewarm at best.

“I suppose that’s if all else fails I could go into business as a tailor,” I volunteered in another vain attempt to break Wren’s melancholy. “It’s these small hands – they work magic with a needle and thread.”

The pun earned not so much as a roll of her eyes, and so I abandoned my efforts at levity, setting to work instead on mending my own clothing in silence.

“Do you… remember what I said to you… at Aunt Rose’s casket?”

The inquiry had come abruptly amidst the standing silence, and yet had been delivered with more hesitance than I’d have thought Wren capable of. I set aside my handiwork to find my Heroic companion appraising me with eyes the color of burnished steel, and once more I found myself apprehensive in her presence, yet this time I did not fear for my corporal safety. In truth I wasn’t ready to renew my aggravation with her self-depredation despite my willingness to enjoy the ease of tension it provided.

Even still, there was no point in postponing the inevitable with lies. “I do.” I provided no clarification of exactly what I recalled and Wren seemed to require none, for after a moment she pressed on.

“I’ve been thinking a lot, and I know that… that I owe you an apology. And an explanation.”

“You?” Ordinarily I would have laughed at the absurdity of being owed anything by this woman other than a swift and righteous beating, yet from the absolute lack of jesting on Wren’s part I decided it was best that I kept my humor to myself for the moment. “Page must have done a fair job at raking me over the coals back in the sewers if even _you’re_ feeling sorry for me.”

The stare that was levied upon me made me almost nauseous with worry; she’d never looked so frightened of anything save the Crawler – and I for one shared the popular belief that anyone who didn’t fear the Crawler should be placed in a sanitarium.

“The harsh words she had were for me not you, and with good reason.” I watched as Wren fretfully licked her lips and averted her eyes anywhere and everywhere but to mine. “She was right, though. For too long I’ve been hiding from you behind my anger.

“I had tried to tell you at first,” her voice came out in barely a whisper, the words speeding along faster and faster much like a barrel rolling down a hill. “But then I… you weren’t coming back and I was so angry that you had left to start with; that you hadn’t been there. Being angry with you was easier, you see. So I hated you with everything I had because at least if I hated you I didn’t have to feel the loss… and if I don’t say it now I never will.”

The moment in which Wren closed her eyes and took a bracing breath I did the same, attempting to steel myself for what was to come, confident that it would not be something easily withstood.

“Ben I didn’t want to hate you because you left without a goodbye. I wanted to hate you because you were nowhere to be found when I lost our baby.”

_Our…baby…_

There is absolutely nothing in my past experiences I can draw from to describe this moment; what I experienced at Wren’s revelation.

There are no words that could adequately relate to you that singular moment in my life.

One would think that learning one had been a father would be an occasion of some note. But in truth in that instant I don’t believe I remembered my name; the world and all of its sensations vanished around me in much the way sand does when the tide pulls it out from under your feet. I recall having a removed awareness that Wren was still speaking to me, though her words were little more than a faint buzzing in my ears. At one point I must have spoke, however, for I hazily remember her voice rising, as though in response to something.

The first semi-coherent thought that I can recollect with any certainty was that there was entirely too much noise around me; that the noise was making it impossible for me to think. It was on numb legs that I stood and left, unknowing of my destination, my intentions, or the woman who was presently just as I had left her: on her knees beside my chair and the torn vestment I had not yet finished repairing.

  


XXXX

  


It was slowly that my mind began to piece together what I had heard seated before that fireplace, and the more my mind grasped the more fervently I wished it wouldn’t.

I’d never put much thought into a family of my own, having spent most of my years preoccupied with the thought of grand adventures abroad or of surviving the trials duty laid before me. Therefore I could not understand why this was having such an impact on me. I’d never asked for a wife or a child. I’d certainly never mourned the fact that I’d gone this long without either. It had been enough to simply enjoy the companies of women unattached, and some marginally less available for courting.

And yet somehow it felt as though everything I had ever held dear had been suddenly and irreversibly wrenched from my life; a feeling that boggled me, as how could I hold something dear when I’d never desired it to begin with.

_Had I?_

All of these things bounced within my head like a child’s toy ball until my surroundings became familiar enough that I could unconsciously find my way to one particular door, my hand lifting to knock upon it by reflex. After a moment, and a slight shuffling noise from within, a dark figure pulled the door open, glaring at me from behind a single lit candle.

“Do you have any idea what hour- … Ben?” I was aware of Page holding her candle out before my face and presumably not liking what she found there, for in the next moment a hand gripped my arm and I was pulled into a comfortably furnished living room, lit only by the glowing coals of her fireplace and the candle gripped within her hand.

“Did you know?” I didn’t feel the need to explain myself; there was nothing else in my world at that particular moment worth speaking of. Not the cult, not the Crawler, nothing but this. “You knew, didn’t you? That’s why you fought with Wren.”

With one quiet look Page said more to me than any word or speech could have ever conveyed. She knew, of that I had no doubt.

“I was beginning to wonder if she would ever tell you.” My dark compatriot admitted at last, moving towards the mantel where she busied herself with the task of lighting a small oil lamp. “She seemed terrified of the idea in the sewers today.” The mayor spoke in a manner that would have customarily been much too gentle to have been addressing me, and yet there was no one else present. This newfound benevolence however, was one-sided.

“ _You_ bloody knew!” I lashed out bitterly. “Why didn’t _you_ tell me?!”

“Because it was not my place. Though I admit there was a moment or two today when I nearly forgot that fact.”

“I had a child and it was ‘not your place’ to tell me?” The word ‘child’ seemed to stop my heart within my chest, and I found my hand clawing at my shirt in reflexive effort to restart it. I could not understand how or why this was so painful. It was still beyond comprehension and yet I railed on, unable to muster any reaction other than the one I was experiencing. “That’s a bleeding load of tripe, Page, and you damn well know it!”

“No, it isn’t.” Looking back, I am both amazed and appreciative to the woman for her astounding exercise of patience she displayed, especially considering the man berating her in her own living room at such an obscene hour of the night was me. Page’s tolerance of my eccentricities had always been thin, and my abuse of Wren had unquestionably caused the mayor’s opinion of me to plummet, yet here she stood, holding herself firmly in check. “I agree you should have been told sooner, but if we told you before Wren was ready she would have had to relive the loss of the child without any warning. You weren’t there, Ben. You don’t know the toll it took on her.”

There was no accusation in her voice, nor the insinuation that I had deserted Wren when she needed me the most, yet the knowledge was there as clearly as if Page had announced it for the world to hear, and I knew that I had no right to fault Page her discretion. Dejected, I felt the battle draining out of me, leaving only that terrible ache I could not bring myself to understand.

“You said ‘we’. Who else knows?”

“Jasper of course, Wren’s physician, Kalin and myself. Some of the castle servants as well, but they were sworn to secrecy. Wren had wanted you to know before anyone else. She’d asked Kalin and me for help in finding you when her efforts failed. We commissioned dozens of couriers and adventurers to search you out and bring you home. You were nowhere to be found.”

Of that I had no doubt. I after all had been living my dream, or so I had believed, traveling the world like the adventurers of old, living only for the moment. I knew beyond certainty that it would have been impossible for someone to find me if they were beyond a day’s journey from me. For two years I had never planned beyond the next day; how could a messenger be expected to find someone so capricious?

I soon found myself sitting in an overstuffed armchair, holding my face in my hands, unable to lift my voice beyond the harsh croak that seemed to have replaced my natural timbre. “How did it happen?” The words poured forth before I had the chance to realized I’d not wished to utter them aloud.

It was here that Page’s response came with the careful, deliberate calm of someone trying their very hardest to maintain an even temper. “She didn’t tell you?”

“I… I don’t remember. I think I left before she could.”

“You _left_ her? _Again?_ ” At last there was anger behind her words, yet I could neither bring myself to argue my failure nor to care about Page’s impending reaction to my admission.

“Please Page, just tell me how.” Without warning hard fingers gripped me beneath either arm, pulling me to my feet and the stern, dark features of my hostess were before my eyes, glaring at me with a reproach I did not try to fend off.

“This is not a discussion you should have with me. This is something you need to ask _her_.”

It was with these parting words in my thoughts and a rough expulsion from the mayoral residence that I stumbled down the streets and back to the house where I had left a guilt-ridden queen, dreading what was to follow and knowing it was unavoidable.

  


XXXX

 

I realized upon entering the front room that I must have wandered for quite some time before coming to Page’s house, for when I found Wren she was curled within her armchair before the dying fire, fast asleep. Across the arm of my abandoned chair lay my vest, the gashes in the fabric crudely repaired, the frayed edges sturdily bound if not hidden. No doubt Wren was only as familiar with darning clothing as her experiences watching Jasper perform the duties had made her. What struck me most terribly though were the dried splotches of eye paint upon the fabric.

She had wept as she’d mended my clothes.

If ever before I’d experienced regret for my actions, it could not compare to the weight that pressed down upon me at that very moment. Twice I’d maneuvered myself into her good graces and twice I’d abandoned her with the pain my negligence had inflicted. That my betrayal of her faith had been unintentional did not excuse my actions any more than it erased the damage it had exacted.

Not wishing to simply leave her where she presently slumbered I lifted her from the chair, and was reminded of how light she was for one so strong. The beds had already been turned down and Wren had previously voiced her desire to for a decent night’s sleep; it was the very least I could do for her just then.

I maneuvered the narrow stairwell which lead to the second floor bedchambers as Wren’s breath wafted in warm, soft puffs against my neck, until one step creaked noisily beneath my boot. In that moment she stirred within my arms, her eyes lifting to my face as I concentrated on not buffeting her head or feet against the walls or railing.

“You came back.”

Her whisper was piteous and I cursed myself repeatedly and cruelly for causing her more grief than I’d ever had the right to do. At last I reached the top of the stairs and, with great deference, deposited her onto the quilted coverlet of the nearest double bed before stooping to remove her boots.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left like I did.”

“Ben you had every right to be upset -”

“I meant before. I should never…” Her boots slipped clumsily to the wooden flooring as I sank to the mattress at her feet, my elbows perched atop my knees as I hunched in the misery I had brought down upon us. “You had to live through this alone and I… I never even knew he… she… existed.”

“He.” Wren’s whisper gave soft confirmation of knowledge I’d not wanted… not consciously at least. Knowing the details made it all the more real, and that was something I desperately did not want. Yet my mouth worked independently from my mind, for I heard my voice asking the same question that had lead Page to expel me from her home, and after a brief interval Wren obliged.

“No one could tell me,” She admitted with an expressive shrug. “These things happen, sometimes. That was the best they could say.” There was a dip to her voice which told me that, for as much as I did not want to hear this, she was equally unenthusiastic to speak it. Yet I owed it to her to share this grief, pathetically delayed though my support may have been.

I listened to her tell me of those first five months in which she’d been devoted to our child and the search for his father. Of the nursery she’d had constructed in her chambers. Of toy pistols and a new diet and a voluntary retirement from the Hero duties she had grown to consider her last true freedom.

Then one afternoon, as she sat at her writing desk with the kingdom ledger spread out before her, it had happened. Five months of meticulous precautions and elated preparation ended before the sunset, and the next morning our son was laid to rest without ever having taken his first breath.

The days that followed were as self-destructive and anger fueled as Jasper would tolerate, complete with solitary trips into balverine dens, extended stays in Mourningwood Fort, and daylight raids upon bandit hideouts becoming more common for her than holding court. This pattern of near suicidal recklessness lasted only a few months until an infuriated Page and all but bludgeoned the sense into the Hero Queen once more, at the behest of one equally incensed butler. With her self-imposed annihilation thwarted, Wren had only one justifiable recourse left – to blame me for abandoning her to endure alone.

At last her story ended and the silence hung between us as heavily as iron shackles.

“Wren I…” I could no longer bear the sound of my own voice yet I knew that I owed it to her to speak; to acknowledge what I had l left her in my wake. “Just… tell me what you want from me. Whatever you want, you’ll have. I swear it.” Not for an instant did I pause to consider what I would do if she requested something beyond my power to grant. No matter what she demanded, no matter what it took, I would find a way to make it possible.

Wren’s initial response was a weary, drawn-out sigh, distantly followed by a voice as low and drained as mine.

“… I want you to be happy.”

The admission struck me so totally by surprise she could have told me she wanted to become a balverine and elicited the same response, a fact she must have noticed for she immediately proceeded to elaborate.

“I spent so long hating you – or so I thought – when in fact I never hated you at all. I… needed you. When I realized you weren’t coming back I convinced myself that you had abandoned me. Like I said, believing that I hated you left no room to feel that… that crushing misery.

“But you did nothing more than keep your word; and in all of the time we’ve known each other you have never broken a promise to me. You stood with me against a foe that would have sent most men screaming. Two years ago you earned the right to go your own way, and I had no right to begrudge you that. Nor do I have the right to treat you as though what happened after was your fault. It wasn’t. At least no more than it was mine.

“You’re a good man, Ben. I don’t want you to live your life regretting this. Be happy. That’s all I ask.”

Her gaze held fast to mine expectantly and, after discerning at last what she waited for, I was able to force my head into a slow, deliberate nod, for she had asked it of me and I had sworn to her that whatever she desired would be hers; having impetuously forgotten that determination was only capable of so much.

And so I dipped my head in obedient compliance; not wishing to actually speak the words that could only ever be a lie.

For how could I ever be happy again knowing what I had lost, and what suffering I had imparted upon the one who owned my heart?

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one undoubtedly will upset some people. I understand that. But I also know that if I want to get published eventually I can’t be afraid to start broaching topics that are not exactly popular. I need to be able to handle them with dignity and a certain level of sensitivity. So I practice – that’s what posting my fanfics is all about.   
> A little side on this - Ben is TOTALLY a family man in my opinion. He stuck it out in Gunk even though he cared nothing for the place - specifically for his family - and only left once everyone was gone. I think that just because Ben never mentioned wanting a family of his own - and perhaps never even considered it - that doesn't mean he would not value, cherish and otherwise appreciate what it meant to have a family (or to have lost one.)


	7. In Which the Author Finds Things Can Always Grow Worse

The evening was in every way the perfect end to a less than perfect journey.

An uncharacteristic display of frivolity found Wren and I lounging beneath Walter’s statue, enjoying an evening which was remarkably uneventful in contrast to our prior time spent in each other’s company, with talk and pleasant banter shared as we struggled in vain against the inevitable conclusion of our time together. For while I would be moving on to presently unknown exploits with the next sunrise, we two were keenly aware that there would be no more grand adventures for our fair queen; at least none that would require the sword arms of those that had risen up in rebellion beside her. As such, it was over this particular topic that we resorted to our tried and true habit of trading anecdotes towards the end of trivializing what lay before us.

“I will miss it, though,” my friend ruminated after a pause between jabs, her arms folded over the stone balustrade as she watched the picturesque sunset over the city below; the rosy glow of dusk upon her face coming very near to matching that of her former complexion, save for the faint traces of unlit Will markings at her temples.

“What - miss the constant threat of death?” I chortled, yet unaware that we had slipped from banter into something more sincere. “The days on end without a bath? The horrible rations that probably tasted no better than our boots? Oh, of course. Yeah, I can see how you’d miss that.”

With a low chuckle my companion reached over and swatted my arm with the back of her hand none-too-gently, “Not that! Living out there; it was liberating. And I’ll miss the camaraderie of people who saw me as an equal; as their friend. It was nice… having friends…” It was a surprisingly poignant remark and not a prospect that I had ever before considered; after all how could a person who had lived their life in a bustling castle surrounded and adored by servants and nobility possibly understand what it meant to be lonely?

Perhaps Jasper, Walter and that Elliot fellow had been more of an exception than the rule in Wren’s case.

“Here now. Don’t talk like that. You’ll always have friends,” I said, at last adapting the pensive manner in which she now spoke, “Battle made friendships never really die, you know.”

A small smile touched her lips, one that was a trifle too sad for my liking. “No… those friendships never die.”

Realizing where – and more specifically to whom – her thoughts were now wandering I found my fingers settling against hers without intention, knowing only that I was eager to halt her thoughts before they brought back the tears as they had before. Though I can say without boasting that I have a strong stomach in many aspects, I admit that I have never been one to easily bear witness to the sight of a woman crying, and found Wren’s tears the least tolerable of all. “I know what it’s like,” I assured my friend with all of the empathy I could safely bring myself to experience, “believe me, I do. But you still have Page and Kalin-”

“And you?”

My throat promptly constricted in reaction to her query, for I hadn’t expected her to request my inclusion as readily as she had. Of course I was aware that we had evolved from mere allies into fast friends, but the manner in which she had leapt at the opportunity to validate our ties to one another seemed almost as though it was the foremost thought in her mind, which was bullocks, I was certain.

“Especially me.” I soothed, giving her fingers a squeeze and immediately gratified to feel the pressure of hers in return. “Don’t you doubt that for a second, pal.” With that she set free a breathy laugh and released my hand from her grasp, leaving me bereft of the pressure though her fingers remained against mine in a tactile contact which was barely perceptible; but only just.

“Life’s going to get pretty boring without you around, you know,” she admitted with a quirked lip and an arched brow that betrayed her return to a more jovial spirit. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider? I bet if you left off the dramatics a bit Page would eventually come around.”

My indifferent shrug at her offer was purely reflexive and my following admission only marginally less so. “I’m not so sure I care to make the effort anymore, to be honest. I need someone who understands my wit and charm. The offer to help her was just to get a rise out of her; we all know she’s not too fond of me.”

With that Wren’s face schooled to perfect composure as she gave a thoughtful nod, as though earnestly contemplating my admission. “Yes, you are fairly intolerable.” She confirmed at last with none-so-much as a twitch of her lip to betray her jest.

“Right then. Glad we’re all in agreement on that.”

With a laugh and a shake of her head the last of my Heroic companion’s melancholy dissipated, leaving quiet contentment in its place, and me equally content to join in her silent comfort, until at last she sighed and pushed herself back from the railing.

“I think we’ve put this off long enough, don’t you?”

Reluctantly, I admitted that she was right. There was no sense in delaying the moment any further; the sun had since slipped beneath the horizon; the pinks and golds of the sunset replaced by purples and midnight blues of dusk. In the city beneath our vantage a room above the tavern awaited me and, in the harbor just beyond, the ship that would take me abroad with the sunrise.

“Well, pal,” I sighed and held my upturned hands out in a gesture of mute surrender to the finality of the moment when, to my astonishment, my actions were met with arms encircling my chest and soft hair coming to rest against my ear. This I had not anticipated, intended, or even dared hope for, and yet I found my arms enveloping Wren’s undeniably exquisite form without so much as a heartbeat’s hesitation.

“I _will_ miss you, Ben,” her whisper beside me was as heartfelt as the embrace, and before I could bring myself to regret my actions, I tightened my hold upon her. If only just this once I would allow myself this one moment. After all, this could quite possibly prove to be our final farewell; nothing incongruous could possibly be taken from one friend giving another a parting embrace, I repeated to myself emphatically.

“I know,” I murmured into hair that smelled enticingly of sandalwood, leather and gunpowder; a mixture I found too intoxicating to not savor. “I’ll miss you, too.” I allowed myself the luxury of deep inhalations for as long as she saw fit to remain until it was that her head retreated fractionally. Immediately I feared that she had discovered my indecent appreciation – that I had offended – when unexpectedly her cheek pressed tentatively to mine.

“This will always be your home,” she murmured, her breath wafting to my ear deliciously so that I was forced to suppress the shiver that threatened; “I know you may not see it so, but it’s true. Remember that and come back soon, will you?”

And in the delirium that was the result of the utter and complete bliss in having a sample of what I had denied myself for so long, I could not tell if she referred to Albion, the castle or her arms.

“Count on it,” I vowed, finding it difficult to rouse my voice into anything smoother than rough cut stone; knowing somewhere within the bowels of my mind that I needed to break away from her, that willpower alone could not withstand this temptation much longer. It was a warning that I dismissed far too readily. “Don’t forget me before then, all right?”

Blinking before my eyes at that moment were two tiny moons pearly and gleaming in the failing daylight. I’d never noticed before that Wren was not precisely my height, but stood ever so slightly above me; the difference so minor one could only notice it if we stood as close as we were now.

“Never.” She breathed.

And that, as they say, was that. My faculties were undone, right there in that single word. So it was that I did the one thing I’d thus far admirably abstained from; I leaned into Wren and laid my lips to hers.

It was sweeter than any other experience in my life, for there was nothing about kissing this woman – this indomitable force of power and authority – that betrayed anything but total and complete innocence. No desperate pawing, no covetous noises, just a kiss that was as pure and tender as anything I’d ever known; returned and not simply tolerated.

It was only when she responded to my advances by flattening her palms against my back to hold me closer against herself that I realized what a grievous infraction I had committed, and broke the contact with a start.

“Damn. I’m sorry,” I found it impossible to meet her gaze at that moment, for the first time too terrified of what sort of reaction I might find painted across that porcelain-pale face. “Look I know better, honestly. You’re not the sort-”

A leather-clad palm reached up to cup my cheek, cutting off my self-effacing groveling; those same twin moons burned so brightly as they gazed at me that they could have become stars.

Wren appraised me for a moment, her thumb brushing at my unshaven skin as her eyes roved over my face, before at last murmuring “Shut up, Ben,” through a smile which seemed very nearly timid. And it was with this command that she leaned into me to reclaim my lips with hers.

  


XXXX

  


I startled into wakefulness so violently the frame of the bed beneath me creaked in protest of the reaction.

The night had been fitful; my dreams tormenting me with memories of Wren’s arms and lips, before shifting cruelly to conjured images of a woman weeping in the shadows; though it was clear that the unseen mourner and the object of my affection were one and the same. Not even in sleep could I escape the wretched truth of my failures, and what I had brought down upon a woman I had no right to hold so dear.

For there was no use denying it – though in truth I had never denied my feelings to anyone – not even myself. Instead, like every other complicated situation in my life that could not be solved with a bullet or a witty comment or by following the orders of one in authority, I had simply run from the truth and in the most convenient and practical manner available to me. Two years ago I’d fled by leaving behind all of Albion under the guise of seeing the world; then to the arms of those willing women when I’d returned to my homeland and found myself desirable as I’d never been, before finally returning to my most tried and true distraction: battle.

Yet now as I sat in the darkened second story of Plum House, listening to Wren’s slow breathing from the bed beyond the screen that separated us I could no longer pretend not to notice.

I was in love with the Queen of Albion.

_Balls._

I’d loved women before, of course, though their less than monogamous career paths or scandalous lifestyles had made developing anything beyond the physical nearly impossible, a fact which had always worked out to my benefit when it came time for me to leave their company for the call of adventure.

There had even been a time when I’d been attracted to Page, though my one-sided flirtations with her had admittedly been more to distract myself from the one woman I yearned for and yet could not allow myself to pursue. What right did a simple solder of even simpler stock have to possess the Righteous Hero Queen of Albion? None – at least not until that fateful night when she’d responded to my irrepressible slip in propriety and sufficiently stolen what remained of my tattered reason.

Thus naturally I took her to bed, thinking nothing of what our actions represented until she was sleeping within my arms. And there it was in that post coital moment that I gave in to the colossal panic my sense of logic so generously provided, leaving her bed without explanation and knowing full well that Wren was not the sort of woman who took such things as relations with a man lightly. She’d mourned that Elliot fellow with a thorough devotion some wives would not have granted their late husbands after all. And in all of the time I had known her and called her friend, my Heroic companion had never once given in to any of the advances, propositions or flirtations that had been flung at her… save mine.

With a feeling I could only compare to a lead mortar ball being dropped into my gut, I realized that two years ago Wren had loved me.

No. No, it was much, much worse than that. Two years ago we’d been in love with one another.

And laying there in the dark, listening to her as she slept, I could not decide which was worse; that I’d lost the opportunity to be with the woman I loved like no other…

…or that I’d come so close to winning her.

I stood from my bed, recognizing my eagerness to move as the telltale sign that I was ready to run again, and in distinguishing this I was able to chose an escape that would not take me from the house; electing instead to take my leave to the sitting room downstairs where I stoked the fire that had burned to coals before deciding to retrieve a bottle of brandy from one of the cabinets. It was still fleeing from reality I knew, but a man could not be expected to change his character on a whim.

There, in a flash of what I can only describe as non-light, color drained from my surroundings the world around me froze in place, as still and silent as a charcoal drawing. The clock at my back ceased to mark time and the flickering of the fire stilled as though it was nothing more than a portrait, its light present but cold and wrong. Even the shadow I cast remained before the cupboard doors, showing that my last act had been to rub my face as I rummaged through the cupboard.

And standing before the door was the old seer, silent as a cat watching a bird yet in such vivid color as she gracefully folded her hands before her waist that I knew she was the cause of my altered surroundings.

“Bloody hell!” My cursory acknowledgement was no doubt imprudent but a lesser alternative to my first impulse which had been to pull pistol and fire. “A simple ‘excuse me’ isn’t too much to ask for now, is it?”

“You do recall my warning.” Of course I was aware that she wasn’t truly asking; one who could watch every moment of another’s life undetected did not have to ask questions after all. “The weapon cannot be located if you separate.”

“Of course I remember,” I admit growling in agitation, which was undoubtedly similarly rash, but then I was in no mood for games. “I promised that I’d see this through, didn’t I?”

“See to it that you do. Guilt can make men do foolish things in the name of atonement, as can concepts such as status. When next you put it in your mind that you are not worthy to stand at her side, recall this; Wren’s mother was raised not as royalty but as a beggar child and then a gypsy. Her blood is no nobler than yours.” It was uncanny the way the old woman could get into my head, and I bristled at her words. Was nothing of my life sacred with her about – not even my thoughts? For of all of the thoughts I would not want another to know, it was the ones she had picked from my head that I would have hidden above all.

“You’re wrong there,” I countered, not attempting to disguise my exasperation with her actions, knowledge or all together general presence before me. “Wren has Heroes in her bloodline. And her father was a noble. I’m the son of merchants.”

“Look back far enough, Captain Finn,” Theresa said cryptically, “and you will find Hero blood in almost every line.” The gypsy regarded me for a moment. “And your assessment of her father is incorrect. While he was indeed noble, it was not by birth.”

“What are you talking about? Lord Eugene was born into one of the highest ranking houses in Bowerstone.”

“Indeed he was. But Lord Eugene is not of who I speak.”

My eyes lurched to the stairwell, expecting to see Wren standing there listening, yet the landing was empty, the house around us silent. Hearing Theresa’s words without Wren present seemed somehow a betrayal against my friend – and that was not something I could endure again. “Lord Eugene was… Why aren’t you telling her this?”

“If Albion’s last Hero knew the truth of her paternity she would not be able to complete the task before her. The Crawler would use this knowledge to destroy her and she would put up no resistance when the creature pressed its attack.”

My mind was instantly consumed with such a potent understanding I could not even pretend that I did not know who it was she was referring to. “Walter… it’s Walter.”

Of course, it could be no other. Walter, who had guided and watched over Wren since she slept in a cradle. Who stood by each and every decision Wren had ever made; no matter how impractical or objectionable it had been to the rest of Albion. Who had held fast to a near fanatical pride and belief in Wren even to his dying breath. Such devotion went well beyond that of a soldier following his monarch. Walter had doted and supported Wren in only a way that a father would of his beloved child; undoubtedly keeping the knowledge secret to protect Wren and her mother from the stigma of adultery.

I found my sympathies going out to the man. It must have been hard watching his daughter grow thinking her father cared nothing for her while knowing nothing could be further from the truth. It would have been easy to tell her the truth and yet to do so would have ultimately caused her greater harm than good.

In truth, we might all be dead today if Walter had not taken his secret with him into death.

Before me Theresa had either failed to notice my bewilderment at this revelation or, more likely, lacked the proper amount of humanity to bother with giving me a chance to digest this information, for she deliberately continued with carrying out the business at hand.

“When the host is destroyed, the creature will try to find sanctuary within a new body to inhabit. Without the cult to perform the ritual that would place it within a new host, the Crawler will be forced to make the transition alone and immediately. Ordinarily this is quite dangerous, and could very well result in failure, yet such will not be the case this time. Having already developed an affinity for Walter, adapting itself to his daughter’s physical vessel will require almost no effort, and will be the only viable option available in the weakened state it will have been reduced to. When the time comes it will be up to you to ensure that the Crawler does not gain a foothold into our world again.”

“How?”

The only answer I received was the seer’s absolute silence, which was quickly obliterated by the bellow I set loose within the confined space.

“No, no-no-no-no- _NO_! You can _not_ ask that of me! The weapon – you said the weapon would be enough!”

“It will be, though only if you’ve the courage to use it.”

“Then I’ll finish it myself! We’ll find the weapon together and then I’ll send her off – she doesn’t need to _die_ for this!”

“Only with Wren at your side will it be possible to defeat the Crawler. Even inhabiting a corpse rather than a living being, it is still too powerful for you. Without her, fighting the Crawler on your own will accomplish only your death. She must be there to destroy the present host so that the creature can make the transition, and it is during this transition that you must destroy them both.”

“But I thought you couldn’t see what happened! How can you be so sure-”

“I can see what will transpire if you ignore my warnings. If you fight the creature alone you will die and Albion’s Queen will have no alternative to obtaining the only weapon capable of defeating the darkness permanently. If you do not face her when the Crawler takes her, she will become the bane to her people she strove so desperately to destroy.”

Without warning something hard struck at my knees, and it was with a bizarre sort of detachment that I looked down to find that it had been the floor. “You swore her an oath, Captain Finn,” the despicable woman pressed her assault on my quintessence without mercy or compassion, “that you would end her life if she became a threat. I am here to forewarn you that it will be so. Will you break your oath to her and forsake her people so that she might live on as a monster?”

My mind took a cruel turn at that moment, as though bent on causing irreparable harm to my conscience for it began to conjure up things I’d have done well not to consider, such as the sound of Wren’s laughter, and the way that her smile could make a man’s heart flutter like a hummingbird. Dejected, I hid my eyes behind my hand. “Don’t ask this of me… I won’t do it.”

“I ask this of you because you are the only one who can.” The hag’s voice cut through my misery, ringing so clearly I wondered absently if she might be placing her words directly into my head. “Refuse this task and you will condemn the world to the darkness she so desperately fears. This choice is yours alone to make.”

I was immediately overwhelmed by the urge to demand why the wretched woman did not adopt the task herself; for all of her omnipotence why could she not stand up and deliver us from damnation?

Yet when I unshielded my eyes to flay her with my question I found the room lit warmly by a gently crackling fire, and the space before the door empty as that of my chest.

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Ben. He’s such a bleedin’ romantic! Come on, you know he is. Just look at him! He’s totally that guy who lost everyone he ever loved, was afraid of getting hurt again, but couldn’t suppress his romantic nature. Hence the previous love interests of questionable taste. But then he finds “the one” and despite his best efforts, can’t help but to fall for her.  
> And then that witch has to go and drop the bomb on him.   
> Why, you ask? Because it wouldn’t be a story worth reading otherwise.


	8. In Which the Author’s Path is Illuminated

The entire affair had struck me as anomalous if, in point of fact, chauvinistically so. Perhaps it was due to the fact that before me stood the first woman I’d had the pleasure of laying eyes upon in weeks. Perhaps it was simply the most logical response to lifetime of experience given that, from my youth with my brothers all the way through my time within the Swift Brigade, I’d never once had an opportunity to consider let alone know firsthand what it was to have a woman fighting at my side in battle. So it was that I found the whole thing at odds with my perception of normalcy; for here she was, Her Highness the Princess of Albion, the carefree darling of the royal family, presently crouched over the mortar, ruining her fine satin blouse and silk stockings with the black powder that invariably clung to every solid form within range.

Of course I had known that women had been Heroes and that the Princess’s own mother had been the latest and most widely praised Hero of our era, until recently, that was. Yet in all of my boyhood fantasies I’d always envisioned – however speciously – meeting great towering men wielding battle-worn swords as wide as my shoulders and harboring voices that could rumble mountains to dust.

Certainly this fine-boned young beauty with her perfect manners, well-coordinated attire and pampered canine companion was in no way the personification of my childhood notions.

The mortar thundered raucously, distracting me once more from my ruminations in time to find deep brown eyes widen as the substitute gunner watched her shot hit with a precision that could put most of my fellow soldiers to shame; the crunch of decimated hollowmen satisfying to my ears in a way I’d grown to appreciate all the more over the past months.

Princess Wren’s head swiveled towards me, and there it was that I first laid eyes upon the only smile which had ever completely stopped my heart, only slightly besmirched where a thoughtless swipe of her hand had streaked black soot across her chin and lower lip.

“Would you look at that,” she chuckled with what I could only describe as fastidiously controlled girlish delight, “it seems I’m not half bad at this soldier business.”

“No pal,” I replied through a grin of my own, enjoying the way her smile widened in earnest, revealing the barest hints of dimpled cheeks at the moniker I had not thought to refrain from using on someone of her standing, “not half bad at all.”

  


XXXX

  


It was upon this most recent penance inflicted upon me by my unconscious mind that I at last gave up my ineffective attempts at sleep and, deciding that exhaustion was preferable to the dreams that seemed ever ready to recount for me exactly what it was that I had won and then lost to my own irresponsibility, roused from my place before the cold fireplace to begin the day early.

It was not quite an hour later when the world beyond the windowpanes began to glow with the coming dawn that Wren at last descended the stairs after having dawdled about over my head for a short time and therefore giving me ample opportunity to prepare myself for the daunting task of upholding my vow so precipitously made the night before.

“Ah, there she is,” I chirped as brightly as sleep deprivation and my present mindset would allow, gesturing with the hot skillet I had up until that moment been scowling into, “have a good sleep, did you? I thought I might try my hand at making breakfast. So, how do you like your eggs – nearly raw or burnt?”

Wide eyed and a bit incredulous of the scene before her, Wren approached the table cautiously, her fingers deftly completing the final twist in her hair knot as she took a place at the table I had already set for us.

“Do you have anything in between the two?” She asked with just as much unease as her initial assessment and I placed the pan back onto the fire, selecting an egg from the bowl at my side.

“Why don’t I just cook the lot and you can pick the ones that might prove edible?” I offered and turned my attention back to my attempts at the culinary arts. “There’s fruit and tea – don’t let it sit.”

Behind me the sounds of cutlery against serving wear clattered for a while, my signal that Wren had started to tuck in, until a lull in activity following by a slight shuffling caught my ears and attention. Determined not to make a show at fussing over her I instead focused my attention on muttering profanities at the splattering eggs before me when at last Wren made her close proximity to my person known.

“I really made a mess of this, didn’t I?” Her voice was soft with regret and I found my spirits dipping with hers all too readily.

“No more than I did.” I all but whispered, forgetting myself in a momentary lapse from that debilitating false levity and bravado as fingers ran unexpectedly across my back, following the uneven lumps that represented Wren’s poor imitation of seamstress work.

_The vest. She meant the bloody vest!_

Relying on impulse, I mustered up an embarrassed shrug and turned, gesturing at my failure upon the stove with my spoon. “At least the uniform I can still wear. Sorry pal, it doesn’t look as though any of this is going to be edible.”

Wren blinked, clearly having expected our conversation to take the turn it very nearly had, and then recovered in time to peer over my shoulder and stare blankly at the debacle that had crusted itself onto the cast iron cookware.

“There’s bread in the cupboard.” She volunteered. “And cheese I think. We can make do with that.”

“Make do?” I chortled derisively, removing my ruined eggs from the flame and abandoning the lot of it in favor of taking a seat at the table while Wren retrieved the rest of our cold breakfast. “I suppose you never did eat a proper Mourningwood meal, did you?”

“I had my travel rations.” She admitted, breaking off a chunk of bread and handing the loaf to me.

“Bloody lucky,” I murmured as though envious and grinned, yet the effort of maintaining this false good humor was wearing on me, and so it was that I concluded that a change in topic to something of legitimate gravity was in order, and would thus give me proper reason to drop the façade without breaking the oath I had sworn to my companion. “So, you said we’d be leaving in the morning for Aurora.” I intoned with all the severity our quest demanded. “Did you have anywhere specific in mind?” With that Wren set aside her meal and leaned back into her chair.

“I’ve been thinking,” the resident Hero replied, her arms folded beneath her breast in that familiar posture she unconsciously adapted while strategizing, “there is a place in Aurora that always struck me as odd. It’s a long, narrow passageway with some sort of a grand ruin at its back. What’s more, this place is crawling with creatures of the darkness – it almost seems as though it was constructed to host them in some places.”

My interests were piqued at this; it was not the first I had heard of this desert corridor, but Wren’s previous assessment of it had been little more than a brief warning to avoid entering that place, made while giving my fellow soldiers landmarks to use for navigating the inhospitable landscape that was Aurora. “You think that could be the cult stronghold?”

“I never could get into the ruin,” she admitted unequivocally, “never had the time or cause to find the door’s locking mechanism. And Kalin was just as mystified as I was when I told her of that ruin. But with the exception of Shadelight, if there was ever a place more perfect for a group of darkness worshippers, it would be the Veiled Path. As far as how to get into that ruin, I believe you bear the answer to that problem.”

My curiosity compounded into an all-encompassing fixation at her admission. “I do?”

Wren very nearly smiled at the dubious expression I undeniably bore, and stretched a hand out to me. “Hand me your satchel.” In moments she was rifling through my personal possessions until at last her fist emerged, clutching at a small metallic disk affixed to a rough leather cord.

The medallion I had pulled from the neck of the cultist in Industrial. My companion slid the disk up between two fingers, providing an unimpeded view of its roughly hewn face. It seemed a trivial design; a simple pattern of straight lines at odd angles which could represent anything from mountains to sunlight given the proper amount of imagination.

“If I recall correctly, this symbol is engraved within a depression upon the door that I could not open. I’m willing to wager that this isn’t so much a medal of station, but a key of sorts.”

“A wager is it?” I asked, feeling the slow creep of anticipation of a new mission steal into my spine, my enthusiasm apparently contagious judging by the manner in which my companion shifted to the edge of her seat.

“A trip to the Veiled Path,” she qualified. It was too enticing; the thought of entering a place previously forbidden to me for the dangers it held. It felt very nearly like I was slipping into my old practice of escaping into battle, and yet this time I would be going off with Wren at my side.

Not a true evasion of my troubles, but a diversion just the same, and one that I desperately craved.

“You’re on.”

  


XXXX

  


Thus it was that our stay in Industrial came to its conclusion, save for the briefest of visits to Page for confirmation that no undue activity had presented itself in the night, during which Page betrayed no hint that she possessed any knowledge of the events that had transpired within Plum House, much to my silent gratitude. Yet where she displayed a merciful discretion with regards to our personal woes, she held no such restraint on the topic of our current quest.

“You aren’t honestly thinking to take the group on by yourselves,” the ever uncompromising Mayor of Industrial glowered at us reproachfully before speaking the words that left Wren and I nearly dumbstruck given their source. “I have to agree with Ben on this. You should not be going alone – not for something larger than reconnaissance, and let’s not pretend we all believe this will just be a simple scouting run. You don’t know the pair of you will be enough to defeat the cult. I’d feel better if you would agree to take a few dozen soldiers with you.”

With this Wren sighed and pinched her nose irritably. “Do you have any idea how difficult it would be for me if I did as you asked?” She sighed, and I recalled the words she had spoken before Aurora’s gates just a few short days earlier.

“ _I have to worry. It’s so easy for me to hurt those I fight alongside. If I don’t hold back it’s possible I’d end up killing you by accident.”_

Given the events of last night I found myself with a newfound appreciation for the level of guilt one person could burden themselves with, and instantly became anxious to prevent that sort of terrible weight falling upon Wren’s shoulders.

“We’ll be fine, Page,” I drawled with a nonchalance I wasn’t so certain I should be feeling, “don’t you worry.”

“What?!” Page’s incredulity was plain upon her features as she wheeled on me, her prior mercies abandoned cruelly with my defection. “So that’s it then? Instead of one of you flying off into madness, this time you’re going off as a pair?”

“Enough!” Wren’s voice reverberated in what was very near to the feminine equivalent of what I had expected of those invented Heroes from my childhood fantasies. “Destroying the cult doesn’t matter! Once we defeat the Crawler, the cult will have lost its purpose. I’ll not sacrifice lives for a vendetta – not when Theresa said that Ben and I were the only two who could truly put an end to this. Ben and I will retrieve my mother’s body and then pursue the Crawler alone. If the cult proves too much for us to take on ourselves, or if it wants a fight after the fact then we’ll do things your way.”

This was by no means enough to mollify the thick-skinned former rebel, but her seething at the very least reduced to something silent and tolerable. “Fine. Just make sure you come back safely; no foolish heroics or sacrifices.”

Allow me to point out that there were very few people presumptuous enough to believe they had the right to order the Queen of Albion about, and the Mayor of Bowerstone was one of those select few; not that she was entirely without cause, given her history with having to dethrone a king and then reign in his grief-stricken sister shortly thereafter. It was for that reason alone that I was certain Wren had refrained from truly putting Page in her place.

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied and, feeling Wren’s fingers take hold of mine, braced myself for the vortex that was Fast Travel.

  


XXXX

  


The Veiled Path. Wren had told me it would be dangerous, and I had anticipated a fair amount of risk given her prior assessments of the perils that lay within, yet I hadn’t anticipated what stood before me. Suddenly all previous bravado and assurance I had expressed in the Plum House and when standing before Page dissipated as though it had never existed, and I was left feeling more dubious of our success than Page must have been.

“It’s a damned suicide mission,” I growled, giving up all attempts to estimate the numbers of the creatures of darkness after more than a dozen presented themselves before the first twist in the path. I could not imagine Wren having encountered so many fiends during her last visit to this forsaken place. Not even she had been foolish enough to risk herself so carelessly. At least, not the Wren I had known during the rebellion.

In all fairness, perhaps it wasn’t unquestionably suicidal, but it clearly would have been a properly simple matter to die in that place if we were not exceedingly, excruciatingly careful. The corridor was narrow, but not so much as to prevent us from being flanked; the walls high and curved in over our heads, which meant that this crumbling passage would succumb to darkness faster than most places in the desert; and at regular intervals along the stairways unmoving sentinels flanked the path, with other shadow spawned beasts prowling at their feet. Briefly I contemplated a trip to Mourningwood for the mortar before abandoning the idea. Though effective against walking corpses, I had no illusions that the clumsy and slow cannon would prove any use against these creatures; not to mention the additional detail of how we should transport it.

With such a heavy presence of the Crawler’s ‘children’, and the temple without a past waiting at the end of the stairwell, it all only further supported Wren’s theory that this was where our enemy organization had ensconced itself.

“Not all of the sentinels were active the last time I came through here.” Wren murmured in response distractedly, her fingers twitching with agitation and sending sparks fizzling into the sand as her prior confidence ebbed as mine had. No doubt my previous estimate of the increase in enemy numbers was accurate; our unwilling hosts clearly also aware of the previous lapse in security and had compensated to rectify matters since Wren last called on this place years ago.

With an irritated grunt I rolled my head upon my shoulders in preparation for what was no longer to be an exciting outing, but a rather worrisome excursion. “Oh well that just makes everything so much better.”

“Do you have a better idea?” The question was not delivered with rancor or even a hint of irritation; Wren had far more pressing matters on her mind than my charms.

“No, but I wish I did.”

“So do I.” With a resigned sigh my companion lifted her hand out before her, the markings covering her body responding with a brilliant blue flare, the sparking about her gauntlet seemed ready to explode into great flaming gouts. There would be little point in attempting subtlety here – there was absolutely nothing about this place which would provide us an advantage let alone the ability to avoid battle all together. “Might as well knock and see who answers,” she muttered, her voice growing to a wordless roar and she spun upon her toes and set loose a fireball large enough to consume a small house.

The first pair of gleaming golden monstrosities stirred to life, dark energies surrounding them as they roused, and beyond their backs more demon-spawn poured out from behind toppled stones and darkened corners and as her fireball sailed onward each and every one of the sentinels it passed roused from their pedestals.

_Balls._

“We’re never going to make it if we try to fight them all,” Wren fretted quietly, glancing nervously at me.

“Forget it, pal.” I replied, having surmised what it was she was debating. “You aren’t leaving me behind – not even you can take them all on alone. At the very least I’m distracting. To them. Not you. I think.”

“Fine then.” Teeth bared, the Hero Queen reached out to clutch at my wrist and with her other hand dug a pale yellow bottle free from the pack. “I hope your legs can run as fast as your mouth.”

“Damn hilarious.” Yet when the world around us slowed in a surreal manner that only one of those outrageously expensive mystical potions could bring about, I abandoned the retort and strove to match pace with the Hero towing me up the path. Drawing my pistol to stave off any creatures that could not be avoided through speed alone, I discovered that no matter how skillfully I could manage a firearm under normal circumstances my ability to compensate for the alteration to time was sorely lacking.

Wren’s hand dug into the pack once more as the effects of the first potion wore off, cracking open the seal and once more slowing the world around us as we sped forth. The concoctions didn’t last long to start with, and that there were two utilizing the effects halved their duration.

“How many more do we have?” I panted and in response Wren wrenched at my arm, quickening her gait to something I could no longer match with any grace.

“Not enough. When we run out get to the top and open the door, I’ll hold them off for as long as I can, so make sure you hurry!”

“Brilliant plan! Are you sure it’s not one of mine?”

“Shut _up_ Ben!”

When the last of Wren’s predetermined insufficient number of potions was used the comparable safety of the temple was just on the other side of the thick stone door and yet it might as well have been on another continent for all the luck I was experiencing with my attempts to gain access while, at my back, Wren held our ever increasing predators at bay. Her suspicions on the operations of the door mechanism had been accurate, yet her deductions had not taken into account the maleficent nature of the cult, for said depression had indeed existed, but had recently been smashed to uselessness within the door, a dismal signal for what we could expect to find within. Yet given our present plight and, having no alternative means to escape this place and our swarming aggressors so long as Wren was embroiled against the shadow minions, I had therefore been forced to resort to my clearly inferior brute strength to gain access to the temple. Had our circumstances been any different I no doubt would have struggled on obstinately, yet this was no time for such luxuries as masculine pride.

“Wren! I believe this door could use a lady’s touch!”

It was only when I heard the cry of alarm from behind me that the uselessness of my presence here struck me. Beyond a thin line of shadow-spawned monsters clearly bent on the hunt, Wren remained atop the precipice edge by virtue of nothing more than the balls of her feet and a death grip on the sentinel trying to slay her. For the love of her life she dared not fight back lest the creature falter and plummet over the edge with her, while around her boots an ominous purple glow was spreading from the gold-clad creature – that particular glow that came just before one of those energy attacks that could send even the likes of one such as Wren staggering, tendrils within the energy reaching out to grasp her ankles with terrible portent.

In that moment I experienced a panic the likes of which I had never before known.

Rifle drawn and an unintelligible battle cry in my throat, I carved a path with bullets through the monsters all the while fighting my primary instinct to take aim at the creature embroiled with Wren at the cliff’s edge. Though it felt like hours, it took no more than a few moments before I finally reached the pair, and with everything I possessed I buffeted the monster from behind, sending it hurtling over the edge as my fingers locked over a fistful of Wren’s shirt, my shoulder wrenching at the sudden addition of her weight and pain shooting up my arm as something hard dug into my palm.

Non-light flared…

…and the hand that had been gripping Wren’s shirt was suddenly, heart-jarringly empty.

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I freakin’ love Ben. I love what a fleshed-out and personable character he was in the game. Not many games take the time to really develop a character’s personality, but Ben had it in spades, and it made writing him so much fun! He’s so sarcastic and at time completely inappropriate, but behind it all you can see that he really is a human being that can care and hurt like others. It gave me liberties to make him an ass in some scenes but give his inner monologues some depth as well as give him moments of real sincerity, because he is absolutely a character with a full range of personality faults and strengths.   
> Bravo, Lionhead, on the creation Benjamin Finn. This fangirl approves!


	9. In Which Fortune Turns and Turns Again

When at last I came to the understanding that it was I who had vanished from that ledge and not Wren I found myself standing within a garden fit for the most discerning of royalty, though the castle which towered over the grounds was most certainly not the home of Albion’s fair queen. In point of fact, through all of my travels I’d never laid eyes on this place before though the vegetation, and the Demon Door which loomed beyond a distant pond, seemed to imply that I had been transported to some thus far unvisited portion of Albion. This in and of itself would have been enough to disquiet me – for Albion possessed only one grand palace for her monarchy – however the oddity of the situation was further compounded by the hues of my surroundings, which had been so severely muted that only the boldest shades retained any hint of their former brilliance; and within this silent, colorless world there was not a trace of life or animation, save for myself and one other;

The aged gypsy seer, Theresa.

My reaction at her appearance inspired no awe or apprehension as would have just days ago been the case. “Where is she?” I demanded of the enigmatic woman, no longer feeling a compulsory need to hold to proper courtesy with her; nor did I care exactly where I was or how I had reached this location, for it was no exaggeration that more unnerving things had occurred in my life of late. It was utterly impossible to conjure any form of concern for myself at that particular moment, not when I had been the only thing keeping Wren from plummeting into the chasm below her – and now I was no longer there to halt her descent.

“She is in no more danger than you,” the presumably ancient woman replied serenely, “you will return to her soon enough.”

“No more danger than me,” I scoffed derisively at her revelation, losing myself to the hostility that I found I now bore the woman since our last impromptu meeting. “Right. Of course she wouldn’t be. I’m not there to kill her like I’m supposed to, am I? You know that your timing is bloody ridiculous?” I took a step towards the shrouded figure, gesturing to our surroundings with the rifle still clutched, disremembered, within my bloodless grip. “Why now? Where the blazes have you brought me? No, forget I asked. Send me back!”

“The time was not of my choosing, I merely answered the call your actions initiated. And this place is the home of the Heroes’ Guild of old,” Theresa replied readily, infuriatingly paying no note of the fact that I had immediately retracted my queries and demanded my return, “or more to the point the guild as it appeared before it fell more than five hundred years ago. You were brought here for the same reason so many before you were. You are a Hero, Captain Finn.”

“Bollocks.” It was sheer verbal reflex that drove me to deny the statement instantly, even if every hair upon my body stood on end at her proclamation. While I knew the old woman to intentionally bend or omit facts when the need suited her, I’d never known her to out and out lie for anything. Not like this. My perfunctory denial seemed to have no effect on her, as it was with any of my previous outbursts or improprieties, as though I were merely a child too ignorant to know better. “Wren’s the Hero of Albion. I’m just a soldier.”

“And yet here you stand, in a realm only accessible now to Heroes. When you took hold of the Hero Queen’s shirt you also took hold of the guild seal she wears around her neck,” Theresa maintained in her usual unflappable manner, bringing to mind the hard object which had pitilessly bruised my palm as I had latched onto my floundering comrade. “At that contact the seal awoke that wellspring of power within you, locked away for so many years; just as it did Wren when she discovered her birthright. Just as another seal once did for your most renowned ancestor; Briar Rose.” The patterned hood that concealed Theresa’s head dipped vaguely and my eyes drifted down to follow.

“Briar…” the antiquated pistol within the holster caught my attention as much as her words. Briar’s Blaster had always seemed an odd name for a pistol, but I had written it off as one Hero paying homage to another. And there were odder names still in Wren’s arsenal; take the Chickenbane, for example.

“She was a Hero ahead of her time.” Theresa accredited, seeming almost to convey an impossible personal knowledge of the long-dead Hero within her praise. “The pistol you carry is one of her collection. Wren no doubt could feel that it belonged more to you than her. That you wield it so effortlessly is not coincidence.”

Albeit centuries dead and gone, Briar Rose was still known well enough to have her name grace pages within the Brightwall Academy. She’d been blessed with great talent I’d read, if annoying and egocentric, and second in marksmanship only to the Hero King of her era. “So that’s what this is about?” I made a conscious effort this time to forgo with the insolence I had been displaying up until that point. “I’m a Hero. With magic and everything.”

An unconsciously regal wave of the gypsy’s hand drew my attention to a chest I was not quite certain had been there the entire time; and sitting inside upon a bed of red velvet was a leather gauntlet, larger than Wren’s, though not by much. For a moment I could do nothing more than stare at the leather covering, the events transpiring in this moment slowly absorbing and becoming something quite near to reality for me.

“What does it do?”

“It will thrust enemies away. Customarily fire is the first magical ability taught to a Hero, as its nature is common knowledge to mankind, yet circumstances being what they are in the Veiled Path I thought a change in tradition was called for this time.”

“Force Push.” My muttered acknowledgement was nearly inaudible as I restored my rifle to its place at my back and slid my fingers into the gauntlet which so resembled the one almost permanently affixed to Wren, finding that the leather seemed to mold to me as though it had been crafted for my hand specifically.

“That is the spell’s name. That you are so familiar with its function already is the only reason I have deemed it acceptable to breach standard initiation practices and grant you this gauntlet first.”

Beneath the leather covering a tingle coursed through my flesh that originated not from the gauntlet but somewhere deep within me, and I found it strange that here was a sensation as natural and familiar as anything I’d ever felt before, yet I was only now experiencing it for the first time.

There was magic resonating within my veins, I no longer doubted this. “How do I use it?”

My eyes rose to find the gypsy holding out a seal identical to the one Wren was almost never without, and with more deference than I am certain I have ever exhibited for anything, I accepted the bauble, slipping its chain round my neck.

“You are a Hero of Albion, Captain Finn. Trust in that and let your instincts guide you.”

  


XXXX

  


When the non-light flashed for the second time in that short span, I was once more maintaining a death grip upon Wren’s shirt and pendant, her hands clamped tightly round my wrist whilst she called my name in a crescendo of panic. The fear in her eyes was palpable; one foot having slipped from the rock in the second it took for me to understand that I’d come back to the exact moment I’d departed.

Recalling the precariousness of our situation, I turned my attention back to the creatures which were presently maintaining a very real and entirely imminent threat to our wellbeing, raising my leather clad hand and, without knowing how else to go about wielding magic, decided to for once trust in what the blind seer had told me. Uncertain of the precise mechanics of the act, I chose instead to trust in the name bestowed upon a Hero’s inborn magical abilities and focused on the act of willing the suddenly tangible power within me to intensify; gratified to feel it build against my palm until at last it seemed almost a physical weight bearing down impatiently against my arm.

Without considering what the ramifications of my actions could be if I had miscalculated, I obliged the sensation.

A concussion of incorporeal force sent black and gold bodies alike plunging back through the air, allowing me just enough opportunity to heave Wren to the comparable safety of solid ground with less deference than a sack of grain before setting loose another volley of the Force Push spell and robbing the descending horde of another few paces’ advantage. At my feet Wren scrambled to her knees, the creatures at her back all but forgotten as she stared fixatedly up at me.

“You’re a Hero?!”

“So I’ve been told!” My voice thundered oddly in that Heroic quality I’d come to expect from fellows of that – _our_ – particular nature, as I reached down to swing my companion to her feet once more. If I had believed her to be light in weight before I was amazed at how unsubstantial she seemed to me now, having not recognized a physical transformation within myself until just that moment. “Get that bloody door open – I’ll hold them off!”

There was of course no hope that we’d be able to kill them all, or even half of them if I was completely honest with myself. Wren’s primary mistake had been in trying; no doubt some sort of ridiculous attempt at protecting me. Perhaps once I’d a bit more training and a few more spells at my disposal she and I could make a proper go of it if we ever got the urge for some completely daft sport. But for now if I could just keep them off of us long enough for Wren to work the door open the rest wouldn’t matter. With my own guild seal tucked beneath my shirt there was no reason we’d have to cross this path out of necessity again, for now I was just as capable of Fast Travel as Wren, though I’d yet to actually make an attempt at the ability personally, and could in all probability secure an escape route for us in the event that she could not.

Adapting to my tactics, and giving me the eerie understanding that these things were capable of strategy, one of the creatures drew up upon my flank and just out of range of my spell. Yet the gauntlet required only the use of one hand, and with the other I drew the Swift Irregular against my unoccupied shoulder and afforded only a passing glance for aim before placing a bullet squarely between its eyes, an act which had taken even less effort that my pre-Heroic skills would have made simple.

Stone ground and crunched behind me, and when a rush of cool air assaulted my back I gave our pursuers one final magical blast to hold them at bay before flinging myself through the opening Wren held. Semi-darkness engulfed us when she released her hold and allowed the door to roll closed once more as together we listened in tense anticipation for the slightest hint that we were not alone. Moments passed in ear-ringing silence, the power withheld against my hand never diminishing as I held it ready to utilize in our defense should we prove to have fallen into hostile company, yet none ever came. With a sigh Wren broke the stillness, her Will markings dimmed and her eyes shimmered like silver coins reflecting moonlight when she turned to me.

With a glance I found – to my astonishment – glowing swirls patterned my skin, shining brightly enough to be visible through my clothes while casting a pale light onto my immediate surroundings and providing the source of illumination with which my fellow Hero’s eyes shone. Even more astonishing was after all of the running and the wielding of magic, and despite the less than adequate night’s sleep I had just endured, I wasn’t even slightly winded; neither, it appeared, was Wren.

“When?” She asked and I, finding it easy enough to deduce what she asked of me, required no further clarification.

“Your guild seal was inside of your shirt when I stopped you from going over. I grabbed it by accident. The seer said that was the trigger.” I shook my head, gazing at the ethereal markings adorning my limbs, at last able to pause and appreciate the magnitude of what had happened and the ease at which I had dispatched and distracted our foes only moments ago; a fete that would have been problematic if not unmanageable in my previous state. “And to think, all of those years I’d wanted to meet Heroes and all I had to do was look in a mirror…”

“Ben, what if this is it?” She breathed hopefully, and for a moment I did not follow – not until she clarified. “The weapon Theresa told us about? What if a second Hero is what we needed all along?”

I frowned, slightly dubious, but willing to hear her out. Theresa had said nothing about me achieving the status of ‘Weapon’ and yet the woman was not exactly known for being forthright except when it suited her timing. “How do you mean?”

“You needed to come in contact with my seal to activate your own abilities,” Wren explained. “And without you there would be no second Hero to discover. We had to be together so that you could become a Hero.”

“Makes sense I suppose,” I mulled thoughtfully, seeing the logic in Wren’s proposition. “But why couldn’t Theresa see that? What’s so hard about seeing another Hero?”

“I don’t think Theresa can see undiscovered Heroes,” Wren admitted, “at least not without a ‘trigger’ as you called it. She didn’t know my mother was a Hero until after that murderer had concluded it was either my aunt or my mother shot them in response. And she didn’t find me until I took hold of mother’s seal. It had been Walter who had suggested I could be a Hero. If Theresa didn’t need a trigger wouldn’t she have drawn you out sooner, such as two years ago? She’s the one that pointed out Heroes are a dying breed. I think she would have sought more out if she knew of a way rather than risk the world on just my shoulders.”

“You’ve got a point there.” I allowed, willing myself to hope that maybe now, together, Wren and I would be strong enough to defeat the Crawler. Yet underneath the hope, the reminder of what Theresa had asked of me once the Crawler fell weighed heavily upon my mind.

_Is this how I’m supposed to defeat Wren when the time comes?_

Amidst my distracted turmoil, and without first requesting permission, pale feminine fingers stretched forth to trace my forehead and temples, no doubt following the strange lines decorating my skin. The contact pulled me from my contemplation and drew my attention to the woman kneeling before me, reverently engrossed in the path her fingers presently charted.

“Strange, isn’t it?” I chuckled in a vain attempt to disguise my unease. I’d seen common folk marvel at Wren’s brilliant transformation in the past; and am certain that I myself had also gawked at her once or twice like a village boy catching his first glimpse of the sea. Yet here in the dark I found it unnerving to realize that perhaps Wren might feel the same awe towards my elevated status; her forefinger passing over a whorl which circled my eye.

“I never realized how beautiful they are.”

Though it was not intentional, the glow of my skin faded as if by cue, and still Wren’s touch remanded, slipping down to skim over my jaw; no longer an admiration of my Heroic status but a noticeable display of some deeper affection that part of me yearned to accept despite the knowledge that I was not worthy of such regard.

So it was that the masochist within me gave coarse reminder of what it was I had just been contemplating before Wren’s appreciation, and out of guilt I reached up after a moment to gently pull her touch from my skin.

“It’s not safe here,” I reminded her – reminded _us –_ for indeed we knew only as much of our surroundings as what was previously seen from where we knelt after having tumbled through the door; engulfed now in the total darkness which I had allowed to overtake us with the fading of my Will markings, it was plausible that our safety was at greater jeopardy than it had been a moment prior.

The fingers between mine retracted with a start, and accompanied the scrape of cloth and leather against stone. “Right.” Fire bloomed brightly in the blackness of our surroundings, just long enough for Wren to light the torch pulled from the thong at her hip, but not so swiftly that I missed the dejection painted across my companion’s features. In the time I sat debating the wisdom in explaining the motives behind my hesitations, Wren had stood and begun to follow corridor deeper into the ruins, turning only briefly to give me a slight, wry smile and a shrug of her shoulders indicating that I should pick myself up from the floor and accompany her; and it was in light of that dogged attempt at flippancy that I chose to hold my tongue.

Beyond a small archway leading from the entrance, we discovered the temple to be nothing more than a single roughly hewn room, furnished only with what could be cut from the surrounding stone or brought within a travel pack and, despite signs that it was recently inhabited, completely devoid of life.

Yet it was what the former tenants had failed to take with them that vanquished all thoughts of good humor and rendered us as silent and bleak as the surrounding walls.

Atop a stone altar at the far end of the great chamber, ringed with a variety of candles, ornaments and symbols painted upon the cold grey surface, the desecrated remains of Sir Walter Beck lay where they had left him; his fine burial clothes hanging too loosely from the withered body of the once robust man, his medallions of state, enchanted sword and pistol remained in their scabbard and holster as well. Clearly those who took Walter from his resting place cared nothing for riches; they’d robbed his tomb for a very specific reason, and that they had left him behind meant only one thing.

It was too late. The cult had what they’d come for.

_Damn. Morris what happened?_

Boot heals echoed dully in the silent expanse as Wren slowly approached the platform; her trembling fingers reached out to touch one hand nearly skeletal now in death.

“Oh, Walter,” her whisper was so full of misery I thought briefly she might begin to cry as she had the night he had died. With furtive jerks of her head she began to search the room, her face a tight knot of miserable concentration. “Help me find something to cover him. _Ben!?”_

With the exception of the clothes on our backs and the finery of Walter’s funeral garb there wasn’t so much as a scrap of fabric in the temple that I could see, save for one large black banner bearing the linear symbol of the cultist’s medallion that I’d have sooner burned than allow to touch Wally. Finding no suitable alternative I quickly pulled my careworn uniform vest over my head and hurried it to the altar to cover Walter’s near skeletal face and chest. Wren’s agitation quieted somewhat, and she took the time to arrange Walter’s hands upon his chest, tucking them from view beneath my garment. For a moment she stood there gazing at his body, her breath ragged with emotion so intense I could only guess as to the maelstrom that must have been raging within her.

“We’ll come back for him, Wren,” I told her, hoping she would understand; that I wouldn’t have to fight with her on this. On the subject of Walter I had no doubt Wren would be willing to forego logic, and I was fully aware that as far as Hero powers went I was irrefutably ill equipped to compete with her if she chose to dig in her heals. “He’ll be safe enough here for now – they’ve no further use for him. When this is over Walter and your mother will both go home where they belong.”

It was only at the mention of her mother that Wren acknowledged the words I had been attempting to use as consolation; and to the reference of her mother she reacted far more vehemently than I had anticipated. “We have to find my mother before they turn her into-” her teeth gnashed audibly as she bit back the thought that required no words to project. “We have to go.”

It took quite the effort to refrain from sighing with relief at her readiness to see reason and the reprieve I had just been given from the prospect of having to outmaneuver one who was undeniably my better in the Heroics arena. “Do you know where?” The question was redundant, of course, yet I had uttered it only out of curiosity for what lay before me. Wren was fixated now, wielding the sort of determination only one confident of her path and ready to weather any perils that journey held would possess; and I as the companion foreseen to accompany her would walk that path at her side.

Before me Wren’s eyes flashed with a fire that had nothing to do with Will.

“Shadelight.”

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I read a long time ago on Fable’s Wiki site that Ben’s affinity for the Skill Trait hinted at the possibility of Heroic blood. Ben is a whiz with a gun, and if you choose to believe his story of knocking out three hollowmen with one bullet, that’s a pretty big indication that he’s more than an average crack-shot. So it got me thinking for the longest time; maybe Ben IS a Hero and he just never encountered the right circumstances to confirm it. You know?   
> So ‘thank you’ to the person who posted the ‘Hero Ben’ hypothesis on the Wiki page and gave me a story to write, because that one little blurb is where this entire fanfic came from!


	10. In Which Delay Becomes Deadly

It was only after some debate, consisting primarily of a fair amount of elevated squabbling in which I was surprised to find myself the voice of reason, that Wren at last consented to a brief stopover in Industrial to replenish our depleted stock of potions and munitions – thanks in no small part to the Hero Queen’s ill-fated attempt at decimating a horde of shadow fiends singlehandedly – as well as to assess the situation within the castle; for it was almost assured that a certain Mayor would already have detailed knowledge of the events which had recently transpired within Her Majesty’s home.

Despite said agreement, however, Wren was not without stipulations of her own, of which she readily presented upon the completion of our exchange. “We go, we restock, we meet with Page and we’re on our way to Shadelight within the hour. Agreed?”

“Well I’ve never been one for drawn out conversations, myself,” I consented, seeing little point in arguing against a proposal I myself found preferable, despite the insinuation of a near total disregard for her responsibilities of state. “Alright. One hour. Then we settle things up proper with those blighters.”

With a curt bob of chestnut locks our bargain was struck and Wren’s reluctance vanished with the promise of the battle to come and the melee of gunfire and spell-craft that never ceased to put everything into proper perspective, her brow only arching with the barest of puzzlement when I held a hand out to her expectantly.

“I’m still new to this whole Hero business,” I grumbled, embarrassed to find myself doubtful of my own abilities – a concept I had never known prior to accepting my new role as a Hero of Albion, “figured I’d let you show me how it’s done once more.” With an altruism at odds with the exacerbating disregard for our mutual safety she’d exhibited not more than a full breath ago Wren’s fingers reached out to encase mine and draw me near to her.

“The act itself is quite simple.” She explained with what I daresay could have almost been a hint of softness touching her expression; a reaction I had not expected of her given her current frame of mind. “Envision where you want to be and will it so. Your Guild Seal will answer the call. Go on.”

“Me? You sure ’bout that?”

An astonishingly indifferent shrug responded to my incredulity. “Why not?”

A thousand different reasons resounded in no particular order within my head, and all of them involved my inexperience bringing about our deaths or permanent displacement to that terrifying other plane, yet I knew better than to risk Wren’s temper given recent circumstances; if she thought it a simple enough matter that even I could manage it, so be it; and if we found ourselves in the hereafter momentarily I would be within my rights to remind her that the notion had been hers from the start while possessing the good fortune of not having to fear for my mortality at the hands of her ire.

So it was that I was yet again confronted with the knowledge of why a Hero’s mystical abilities had earned the title Will, and not magic or spell craft, for indeed much of those incorporeal powers were the result of intention alone. Clearing my thoughts of everything save for the memory of the musty odor of the canals and factories, the echo of production against brick, and the cool sea air traveling along the waterways deep into the city, I closed my eyes and willed us to a point just outside of The Riveter’s Rest – one of my preferred haunts – and was startled to find the jarring vertigo of Fast Travel respond to my desire; the passage as normal as once could consider it and as uneventful, if one could call Fast Travel such.

It was the sound of screaming that first alerted me to the peril I had placed us in upon our materialization.

“Bloody-” a vicious snarl cut off the obscenity I was ready to unleash when Wren’s fingers clamped down upon my wrist with spasmodic force; her voice rising in a shriek of alarm, the likes of which I’d never heard her emit prior to this moment.

“Ben – _look out_!”

Instantaneously I was wrenched by my entrapped arm back into the blinding white vortex of the Heroes’ path, and yet this time the violent nature my movement through the passageway made all previous experiences with Fast Travel seem nothing more than a tipsy stumble down a paved street. At my other arm an unseen force gripped the shoulder with sharp pressure, and when pain sliced from shoulder to wrist I knew that whatever had driven Wren to pull us from Industrial had followed us into this nightmarish arena. Unable to shed Wren’s crushing grip from the appendage she still clung to I found it impossible to fend off my invisible attacker; my cries of alarm and pain obliterated beneath the whirling noise that was Fast Travel.

It was only when I landed face first upon a vaguely familiar checkered floor that I was at last able to free myself of Wren’s grasp, reaching for my pistol so that I might lay waste to whatever it was that had drawn burning lines of seeping blood down the length of my shirtsleeve and flesh beneath.

To my horror – if not surprise – I found my brutalized arm to be the prisoner of a balverine’s claws, my hand poised between the sealing jaws as deadly saliva dripped onto my leather gauntlet. I cannot recall actually conjuring the idea to push the creature off of me by utilizing my Will, I simply knew that I needed my hand out of this thing’s mouth before its venomous teeth could contaminate me as well, and out of that desire alone the gauntlet obeyed; the balverine hurtling through the air, though not before ruining more of my flesh with its merciless grip. The impact of its body against the wall shattered what must have been an obscenely expensive mirror with flailing limbs before the beast was pushing itself back onto its hindquarters with an uncanny ability to recuperate.

Somewhere behind me I was aware of the sound of more fighting; of shouting voices and a growling that did not match that of the creature or creatures we had accidentally brought with us to Wren’s Sanctuary. Yet foremost within my thoughts was pulling free Briar’s Blaster and unloading its precious contents into my attacker’s brain, though my efforts were thwarted when I myself was thrown back, my shoulders colliding with what must have been the great map at the center of the chamber. Without bothering to lift myself from the wreckage I drew the pistol and swung the weapon wide, striking my assailant across the face with the impressive barrel and purchasing the opportunity to tuck in my knees and thrust my boots into the fiend’s chest, heaving the creature off of me.

Ordinarily one shot would have been sufficient, however Balverine skulls are astonishingly resilient, and in my regrettably unstable position I was not quite sound enough to find the creature’s eye with my first shot; though when the second shot obliterated the orb, I admit that in my agitation I fired a third shot into the remaining eye for good measure, bounding to my feet and turning my attention to the raucous at my back before the body ceased its final death throe.

At the far end of the circular room a mass of silken black and white had affixed itself to the second Balverine’s back, Pip’s growl of pure canine hatred making it clear that the pampered royal pet was indeed a killer in his own right; gleaming white teeth staining red as they drove into coarse fur that covered his prey’s throat, while lanky arms stretched awkwardly in an attempt to dislodge our four-legged defender.

“Pip heal!” Wren’s fingers sparked and sizzled with a spell she refused to set free until her beloved companion was out of harm’s way. “Heal, damn it!” Yet be it a desire to protect his mistress or vengeance for that last encounter which had forced Wren to retire the dog from battle, Pip would have no part of obeying her commands this time, and the scent of scorching leather informed me that there was no further time for pleading.

“Sorry boy,” I muttered and set loose what I hoped would be a gentle specimen of Force Push, extricating the dog from his quarry with a startled yip as he skittered frantically to a stop on the polished floor. The room was immediately awash in a vivid orange glow and a flash of heat so intense I thought for a moment that the remains of my garment might have caught fire; at the core of that glow and heat a balverine which howled and launched itself about as it attempted futilely to avoid the flames which had enveloped every inch of its body before at last crumpling to the ground in a reeking conglomeration of charred hair and flesh.

“My word! We’re under attack!” From the entrance of the armory Jasper stumbled forth hefting a rifle quite obviously too large for his frail frame, his gaze near mad with alarm as he took in our surroundings, quaking from head to toe in what was quite clearly a fierce desire to find himself anywhere but his current situation. With this display I at last understood that this man was not simply a servant of Albion’s queen but a man who had acted as Wren’s surrogate father-figure when her true father could not, and suddenly it seemed all the more likely that Jasper was aware of Wren’s parentage while the woman herself remained ignorant.

“Not us,” Wren countered whilst patting per smoldering gauntlet against her thigh, “Industrial.” With a flick of her wrist she flipped the barrel of Chickenbane open to take stock of her remaining ammunition, scowling darkly as she closed it with an identical ease. “I’m almost out. You?”

“Four shots left,” I replied readily; years of living as a crack shot having taught me to account for every bullet before ever pulling the trigger. “Three in the pistol, one in the rifle.”

“Hope that’s not your sword arm,” she murmured, her firearm to gesturing towards my fouled appendage.

“This isn’t my first fight, pal,” my retort came with an arched brow and a decidedly self-assured smirk, “and it damn well won’t be my last.”

Whether it was my arrogance, the timing of my response, or a heartfelt belief in the legitimacy of my statement, Wren’s answering grin – though slightly malicious – was something reminiscent of her former levity. “Then it appears we’re late for a party.”

“Do be careful Majesty,” Jasper fretted, relinquishing his weapon to the floor and reaching out to stroke a whimpering but otherwise unharmed Pip absently.

“Lucky for us there’s two Heroes in Albion now.” Pulling my blade from my back and hoisting it over my shoulder as I prepared to depart, Jasper then uttered an admission that caught me thoroughly unprepared.

“And for that, Captain, you have my gratitude.” He announced without rancor. “Watch over her, if you would?”

I found it only possible to nod at the earnest nature of such a request and, without reaching for Wren’s arm, it was I this time that initiated the passage to Bowerstone, knowing in some inexplicable way that Wren was not far behind me within the roiling void.

  


XXXX

  


In the moment my boots struck solid cobblestone I was in motion; hurtling down back alleys and canal paths I knew would provide the quickest route to where Page would undoubtedly be making her stand – for the orphanage had been a cornerstone in her struggle to reform the city during the time of reclamation after the rebellion, and as I knew Page, she would sooner confess to having feelings for me before she’d let that building or its inhabitants fall to an onslaught. At my back boot heals clacked hurriedly along without protest or query; for as it often was upon the battlefield, Wren and I were once again of the same mind.

Around us the town had been reduced to wartime turmoil; common folk with blunted blades and antiquated firearms battled against the occasional beast, with even more of our fellow countrymen strewn about the streets in pools of blood – a clear indication that Page had either been unaware of the impending attack or unable to rally a proper defense. Given that this was Page I was considering, I could not decide which implication was more disturbing, for as confident as I was that nothing would escape her notice, I was equally as certain that nothing could bring the former rebel to her knees against her will.

Despite these convictions, however, it was plain to me that one of the two probabilities must have been the case, for her people were dying within the walls of her city and with not a single crimson uniform in sight – an oversight Page would never consciously tolerate.

“Where the bleedin’ hell did she go?” I was growing angrier by the moment with my current trail of thoughts, and therefore by association with the subject they circled around incessantly. “They don’t stand a chance without help!”

“Keep moving!” The woman at my back ordered tersely, contravening herself briefly so that she might pause and behead a balverine too intent on a portly man with a cleaver to notice its own impending doom before sprinting to catch me up. “Either she’s there or she’s not – no matter what we need to reach that orphanage!” Of course Wren once again had the right of it, for it was there that we would either find our answers in the woman who had sworn to protect Bowerstone’s people, or people in desperate need of our assistance, if not a combination of the two.

Rounding a few more corners I was at last confronted with the sight and sounds I had yet to bear witness to since our arrival; dozens of uniformed soldiers creating a veritable wall of human defiance, the clash of swords, ear-splitting echoes of gunfire and an occasional explosion here or there in close quarters drowning out their battle cries as they engaged a horde of balverines the likes of which should have sent them fleeing. Yet these were no ordinary soldiers, for at their anterior one very familiar face, contorted with an expression bordering on maniacal animosity, sneered and bellowed in open defiance as he hacked into a white-furred beast.

“ _Morris!_ ”

Swords in hands, Wren and I cleaved a path through the monstrosities, not trying to slay or even maim, but simply to reach my former brigade as they held their ground against the invading beasts.

“Finn! Damnation man, it bloody well took you long enough to get here!” With his free hand he reached into his belt and ripped free a parcel of ammunition, thrusting it into my hand without ever taking his eyes from his foes. “Since when are you a sword fighter?”

“I’m a man of many talents, Morris, you know that.” A guffaw answered my quip, yet I paid it no heed, for a cluster of beasts had found an opening in the line’s defense and was pushing their advance upon us with only a few men near enough to pose a resistance. Without hesitation I placed my bag of bullets between my teeth, hefted my gauntlet and let Force Push rip through the balverines’ ranks with as much strength as I could muster; brown and white bodies hurtling back through the air with shrieking howls.

“Fill this gap men,” I bellowed over my shoulder as I paused to load my pistol with my newly acquired supplies, “before they do it for us!”

“Many talents my ass!” Morris grunted. “You think I don’t know what you just did? That ain’t soldier talent, Ben. You’re a damned Hero!”

From Morris’s left a wall of fire erupted in a show of obvious aggression-born excess, pushing out into the street and giving birth to walking, screaming infernos that staggered and fell dead almost immediately.

“Trying to burn down the city are you pal?” I quipped, using my own Will to push more of the beasts into her conjured blaze, and from beneath the roar of those flames and battle I was almost certain that I heard Wren utter that familiar demand of “shut up, Ben” she’d adapted so easily from Walter, to which I responded with my formerly instinctual egotistical smirk.

“Where’s Page?” The Hero Queen’s voice boomed out from beneath the din almost immediately thereafter, and Morris who stood directly at my left, was only marginally less easy to hear.

“On the roof, blowin’ the blighters sky-high with the mortar.”

“You gave _Page_ a mortar?” Somehow the idea of Page with a cannon inspired an apprehension in me that I could not describe; undoubtedly because I’d so often been the object of her annoyance in the past.

“I didn’t _give_ her anythin’. The woman all but claimed it as her own when she saw it come in on the wagon. Do you know how many men it took to drag that thing up to the top of that building and set it up for her? We almost lost our hold on this place while she played fussy housewife!”

Thunder rang out from above our heads, and now I was cognizant of the fact that it was Page, decimating our aggressors from above, for beyond the contorted backs of the creatures before us brick and mortar exploded in a haze that was just a touch too red to consist of the pavers alone. Ah yes, Page was in her glory, no doubt.

“What happened here, Morris?” Wren demanded between fiery gouts into the balverines.

“We were ambushed, Majesty,” the man admitted through his teeth, “not many, either. But the blighted things were fast and by the time we knew they had Sir Walter they were already in the catacombs. The brigade followed, leaving Captain Turner and his men behind to secure the castle. When we got here it was pandemonium; balverines everywhere. Page was evacuatin’ the citizens to the orphanage, but a lot were lost in the act. Fumin’ mad, she was. We lost Sir Walter in the mayhem.”

“How the bloody hell did they get _balverines_ to do their bidding?” I found once more that placing bullets into the pitiless eyes approaching me was relatively easy and the most efficient means of killing the vermin, yet there always seemed another ready to take the fallen beasts’ places. “And so many?”

“Balverines aren’t mindless,” Wren’s response was almost casual as she picked off the creatures one by one, “I’ve spoken to them before. They’re implacable and grasping; they can be manipulated easily if one can find the proper motivation.”

“Well isn’t that lovely.” I muttered, shouting out in furious alarm just then as the ground erupted into shrapnel not more than ten paces before me. “Bloody hell, woman,” I whirled and roared to the rooftop in a voice that carried remarkably well despite the clamor around me, “aim for the monsters! _The_ _monsters_!” With a wild arm I gesticulated to the creatures at my back and was rewarded with the sight of a dark head covered in thickly plaited locks leaning over into view, eyes wide with shock visible to me even from this distance.

Wren’s voice quickly enough broke me from my reprimands. “Ben! Pay attention!”

“Balls!” One of the fiends was closing in quickly and with my hand still raised I thrust it back with my Will, only to find that the act was strong enough to unhinge its lower jaw from its skull, killing the balverine before it struck the ground.

We fought on like this for what could have been hours or days; for in a battlefield time is almost always meaningless and only measured by one’s supply of bullets, foes and adrenaline. Men fell with the beasts, though thankfully at a far less frequent rate, until it was at last that a soldier on the outskirts of the lines brought down the final balverine with the broken blade of what had once been his standard issue brigade sword. For a time we remaining warriors stood silent, poised and ready for a second wave that never came, before at last soldiers slowly began sinking to the ground in exhausted relief, Morris included, while Wren and I stood merely panting in our lesser exertion.

“Is it always so easy?” I asked of my superior and at my feet Morris barked an angry chortle.

“What about _that_ was easy?”

Wren elected – wisely – to disregard the conversation between Morris and I and instead turn her attention to the doors at our backs where the sounds of barricades being dismantled could be heard only moments before Page emerged, blackened from the mortar and looking as irate as Morris had implied in our battlefield tête-à-tête.

“I trust you know what that was about?” She demanded, which for the record should not be confused with requested, implied, or any other phrase which may construe some form of manners or deference having been utilized with her queen.

“A diversionary tactic to get Walter out of the city,” Wren surmised. “Though how they managed to remove him to Aurora so quickly is beyond me.”

“Almost makes you think they had some way to use Fast Travel,” I muttered, my arms crossed as I tried to puzzle out the dilemma, “but then they’d need a Guild Seal, wouldn’t they?”

“You mean the medallion Wren wears?” Page frowned, pointing to Wren’s breast where the seal would be resting beneath her shirt. “So medallions like that aren’t just symbols?”

“It’s what awakens new Heroes and allows us to travel instantaneously from one place to another.” Wren explained, “It is how we reached Industrial so quickly after discovering Walter, and how Ben discovered who he is.”

If I had been of the inclination that Page had seemed surprised on the rooftop during the battle to say the same applied in this case would have been a drastic understatement; for when I lifted my leather-clad hand and displayed for her the evidence of my Heroic nature I was quite honestly taken aback at the look of utter shock that crossed her face, and if not a little delighted that I was the cause of the greatest surprise I’d ever witnessed cross her features.

“ _Ben?!_ ” She quite nearly whispered, leaning forward as to gain a better vantage over the two foot gap between us so that she might view of my gauntlet in detail. “Ben Finn is a _Hero_?”

“Shocking I know,” I drawled, returning my arm to its place over my chest, “the world’s really in for it when ol’ Ben Finn is in charge of saving it.”

“You said medallions,” Wren frowned, ignoring my whit as was usually the case in situations such as these, “you mean to say you know of more than just mine?”

“A medallion identical to the one you wear was stolen from Reaver’s former mansion just yesterday.” Page revealed, prying her eyes from my hand so that she could focus upon her conversation with Wren. “Apparently it once belonged to the old Hero Garth.”

The bile rose to my throat. “Even if they got their hands on the seal, don’t you have to be a Hero to use it?”

“Maybe they just needed the body of a Hero.” Wren growled, and the wrath I’d witnessed in her eyes beside Walter’s body returned instantaneously as she clarified without need; “They have my mother.”

_Right. In that case…_

“Morris, I need the men to pool their supplies. Bullets, potions, dressings, all of it. Her Majesty and I need to pay a visit to a cult, and we’ll not want to go in empty handed.”

The man who had stepped in to take my position as commanding officer of the Swift Brigade stood and promptly saluted me with not the slightest hint of the banter we two had shared during our service together. “The men and their provisions are at your disposal, sir. Give me ten minutes?” I scowled, but was denied the opportunity to refute this offer.

“You have two.” Wren growled on my behalf, and without any further formalities Morris was bounding off, shouting for men to turn out their pockets and empty their rifles. As I watched my hand was caught up and a cache of health potions was placed in my grip, Page’s eyes as piercing as a sword and as hard.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you-” it was easy enough for me to see where her warning was taking us, and easier still to halt it before it could be spoken aloud.

“I’m done with running Page,” I broke in before she could finish. “I mean it.”

“You’d better be.” Her voice was softer, but not so soft that I felt Wren could not hear us. “Even Heroes need to be saved sometimes, Ben.”

I wanted to tell her that she didn’t know the half of it; that there were worse things threatening our Hero Queen than a broken heart. But as I said, I wasn’t certain that Wren would not hear every word of it.

For if Wren knew what it was that lay before us, and the threats Theresa had warned me in secret we were about to face, I was certain that Wren’s stubborn nobility would thwart whatever chance I had of saving her life. And that was when the revelation struck me with full force:

Wren was completely, unequivocally, and without question, her father’s daughter.

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter was longer in coming out originally because I already had a completed Chapter 10 down in print. I had it ready when I first posted Chapter 9 in fact. But I went in to do a re-read and was so totally bored with it that there was no way I was going to post it.   
> So I sat around for a while perfecting my process, which is as follows: Finish the chapter, stare at it until the loathing was totally consuming me, swear at my computer until I felt the need to give the poor machine a Xanax, brood over the failure of my efforts for a few days/weeks/whatever, and then finally sit down and write something halfway decent!   
> Then as in accordance with the final steps of my process I posted this chapter, having found it suitable, an then went online immediately thereafter to start to pick out more faults with it which I may or may not have edited.  
> Welcome to the mess that is my creative process. ;o)


	11. In Which the Darkness Brings Too Much to Light

It was vastly apparent as I stood in that unnerving silence and oppressive heat that I had never before appreciatedg sunlight the magnitude of what Wren and Walter must have faced that fateful day in Shadelight, during which I had found myself a victim of circumstances which left me – to my everlasting regret – rent from their sides. And though I recalled with unfortunate clarity the shadow of fear that had never through the rest of his days left Walter’s feature, and having witnessed the final battle between Albion’s Queen and the same indomitable man that the Crawler had reduced to a living puppet, I had of course never been of the false assumption that it had been a simple thing to endure, or that the lasting scars of their time in those ruins were not permanently engraved upon Wren’s soul. Yet it was one matter to believe I possessed an understanding of the gravity of that experience, and quite another to stand before the ominous entrance to the Crawler’s temple and watch a woman the world considered insurmountable physically balk at the very notion of stepping foot into that place once more, where only moments ago she had been the very pinnacle of determination.

My mind scrambled in earnest effort to discern a way of keeping this cherished creature out of the temple and away from the monstrosity that would pursue her once we had dispatched its present host, though every argument I could conjure would have easily been thwarted by reason or common sense; I’d admittedly never been one for negotiations or strategies. Yet I was overwhelmingly compelled to put forth an effort, meager though it may be, and therefore found words spilling from my lips before a unified thought could take shape within my mind.

“Look,” I began, gesturing apathetically towards the temple I felt only a strong apprehension for. “this can’t be easy for you, I’d wager, so if you-” My offer was no sooner implied than that obvious fear was smothered by a regal composure she could apply to her face as easily as her rouge, and I was graced with one of her gentler smiles that never ceased to stop my breath, not even here, in this place.

“There’s no need for that.” She murmured with downcast eyes and a slow shake of her head. “I appreciate what you’re doing. I know I must not be a very confidence-inspiring figure right now and I’m sorry for that. But I swear I won’t let you down in there.”

The notion of Wren failing me in any way imaginable would have been laughable if not for the shame that washed over me at the insinuation that I was somehow worthy of placing expectations upon her to which she was compelled to live up to; not after I had proven myself undeserving of her attempts repeatedly and in the cruelest of ways.

Still, this was neither the time nor the place for that conversation.

“I never thought you would, pal,” I murmured instead, trying my damnedest to bury the ache that was suddenly growing exponentially within my chest and failing in the process, “not even once.”

“Good,” the weak smile upon her lips grew in earnest from some hidden store of strength, undoubtedly for my benefit, “I can do this. It was just… seeing this place again; it caught me off guard for a moment. I’m fine now. Honestly.”

“Look, I know you say that you can do this, and I believe you. I do. But-”

“They have my mother, Ben,” that gentle smile faded out of existence and my companion’s insistence was delivered in a voice a touch too gentle and bordering on morose as she reached out to rest fingertips to my heavily bandaged arm, clad beneath the fresh shirt and vest conferred upon me by Morris after the man finally took note of the ruined state of my former garb, “what would you do if it was your mother? Would you just stand here and wait for someone else to save her from becoming something so terrible? Would you abandon her to that fate?”

My argument lost, I frantically began to weigh the idea of my last known and most desperate strategy; telling her the truth despite Theresa’s proclamations. For Wren’s certainty bore with it what must have been an equally damning finality as that of Theresa’s visions, and it was only fear of Wren’s reaction and the disastrous foreseen consequences that stayed my tongue and kept me to the blind gypsy’s warnings. Still, if Wren faced the Crawler it would overtake her in the end, having already perfected the art of conquering those of her paternal bloodline, and if that happened there was nothing within my power that could be done to save her; and it was an absolute certainty that I would rather take my chances and face the demon alone than risk having to bear arms against _her_.

Regrettably though, Wren had little to no doubt of what her next course of action should be, and was striding into the abysmal temple before I was able to pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

  


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Still brooding fretfully over the wisdom of confessing every detail of my private exchanges with the seer to the one woman who deserved the truth more than any, we had made it not more than fifty paces into Shadelight’s entryway when Wren stopped short in front of me and, sidestepping her to confirm what dangers we faced, I found my present line of thought abandoned if only temporarily.

It was easy enough to deduce the cult’s fate when we stumbled across that first body; the man’s mouth open in a tortured – now silent – scream he had obviously carried over into death. The claw marks bloodying his eyelids and cheeks had been wrought by his own hands, as was apparent by the skin and blood caked beneath his nails, and adding further to the impression that death could not have come soon enough for this one.

“Makes you wonder what they expected,” I muttered, unable to muster even the briefest spark of sympathy for the corpse at our feet as I reached for a torch and striker, noting that the weak light sifting through the dust from the entrance faded into smothering blackness just ahead. “Did they really think the incarnation of darkness was going to play nice with them? We shouldn’t separate. Let me get this going; then stay where I can see you, alright?”

Wren, however, seemed not to notice my observation or request for cooperation; her gaze focused with single-minded attention upon a shadow-swathed point deeper within the ruins. It was only when I paused my prating long enough to think to question her silence that I understood what held her attention so completely. From somewhere in the blackness the sounds of whimpering, like that of a wounded dog, echoed distantly against the stonework, and to my knowledge only one canine had wandered these sands during our lifetime, let alone stepped foot within this accursed place.

The torch I had taken to with my striker, having no ability to conjure ethereal flames personally, flared in my grip and luckily so, for Wren was immediately and predictably speeding through the darkness towards the wretched sound. If any trace of her previous anxiety remained it was lost; buried beneath a sense of urgency that would drive her onward no matter the danger.

“Blast! What did you not understand about ‘where I can see you’?!” She might have ignored my call had the light of my guttering torch not thrown wild shadows against sand colored walls and pavers as I raced to catch her up, the acrid-smelling flame threatening to die out at any moment and blind us completely; and even at this she only slowed to a quick trot.

The whimpering was not that of a dog as I had imagined it to be, but a woman, seated in a tight ball upon the sand encrusted floor. Her facial tattoos and permanently tanned features identified her as Auroran, yet the black robes and dark tattoo upon the webbing between her thumb and forefinger marked her for the cult we hunted. Wild, sightless eyes peered out of her cowl in horror, shadowed so deeply even in the torchlight it was clear she’d been touched by the darkness.

“What happened here?” Wren demanded through thickly-veiled relief, crouching down to stare into the eyes of the dazed creature while at my queen’s back I drew Briar’s Blaster, ready to end the perfidious fanatic if she as much as twitched towards the subject of my newly acquired overprotective tendencies.

“Forgive me Master,” the dark woman whimpered woefully, rocking back and forth in a speed far too emphatic to be considered soothing by anyone. “Forgive _us_ ; we did not mean to fail you.”

“Fail? What are you saying? How did you fail?” Hope flared briefly in Wren’s expression, an optimism that I could not bring myself to share; the apprehensive tingle still running through my spine and Theresa’s warning still so much a knot of trepidation in the pit of my stomach.

“It can still be done,” a smile twisted with obvious insanity split the cultist’s face, her teeth gleaming brilliantly in contrast to the stark shadows which filled the hollows above her cheekbones. “Yes… yes it can still be done. All will be well again, you shall see.”

“She’s a nutter, Wren.” I mumbled, comprehending at last that this madwoman wasn’t speaking to us; more than likely she wasn’t even aware we stood before her, for the dark stains circling her eyes spoke volumes about the truth of the state of things – more so than this creature’s ravings. Recognizing that pulling any information of value from this traitor would be nearly impossible, I for one was more inclined to simply press on and put a bullet into anything that moved with my companion being the only exception, yet my opinion was met with an absent wave of dismissal; Wren’s attention focused nearly entirely on the huddled mass crouched at her knees.

“Bring her before you, Master,” the lunatic crooned on without hesitating to acknowledge our queries or statements, her rocking just as vigorous as it had been from the moment we had discovered her, yet where there had once been fear now clever scheming painted her features as her beleaguered mind began to churn once more. “She would come, oh yes. The daughter has strings that would pull her. Pretty dark-skinned mayor. Pretty soldier-man.”

Gooseflesh prickled my skin and lifted the hairs upon the back of my neck, redoubling that ever-present tingle that warned of forthcoming danger, as if Wren’s alarmed eyes upon me would have somehow been insufficient. While I had never in my life been called ‘pretty’, even if I had been more than appropriately confident of my appeal to the fairer sex, I had no doubt that I was the soldier this lost soul spoke of, and deduction reasoned that only Page could be the ‘dark-skinned mayor’. It was conceivable that this ‘daughter’ the woman spoke of was Kalin – who had been the daughter of Aurora’s previous head and now by rights was its new leader – possible, yet not probable. Kalin had fought the Crawler with us to be certain, but it was Wren who had been the one to lead us into battle; had been the subject of Theresa’s warning of this fateful day we had at last come to.

Whatever this cultist who had fallen from her master’s grace was trying to do to place herself back in the monstrosity’s good standing, drawing the Hero Queen of Albion here was the key to that plan, and I had a very strong suspicion of what ‘whatever’ entailed.

The time to send Wren off had come all too abruptly, I realized. “Hey pal, listen to me-”

“Pretty daughter would come if we pulled her strings. Pretty daughter would follow…”

Wren was also reaching the limits of her patience with the sinister creature, apparently, and reached out with one hand to grip the woman’s jaw between hard fingers. “Why do you need the pretty daughter?” Having obviously deduced who the ‘pretty daughter’ was as well, Wren was clearly in no mood to humor this creature any longer. Nor was I for that matter, and silently I lifted Briar’s Blaster to take aim at one of those sightless black pits marring the cultist’s face, debating on the wisdom of shooting her now before she could utter another word, if only Wren would release her grip on the woman and remove herself from harm’s way.

“Wren-”

“My mother was stronger.” Wren kept on despite my entreated attempt, instead pulling that terrifying face closer to her own so that those darkened eyes could not avoid gaping at her. “So why do you need me?” The madwoman blinked within those shadowed recesses; seemingly as confused with Wren’s presence as she was that Wren would have to ask a question that possessed such an obvious answer.

“Master wants the daughter.” She whimpered in acknowledgement at last, a glimmer of her preceding fear seeping back into her voice and features alongside the confusion as she seemed to decide that she was displeasing the one she spoke with, and in doing so displeasing her ‘master’. “The daughter is the same…”

“If I am the same why does it need me when it already has mother?” Wren argued, shaking the woman’s chin with growing hostility.

“But Master does not want the mother - did not have the mother.” The doleful creature moaned haplessly, trying to resume her mad rocking and yet unable to move beyond the stone-like grip my companion had upon her chin. “Master had the father. The father, not the mother. The mother does not please Master; brittle corpse of rot and decay…” the description of Wren’s mother was spoken with an instant disdain which bordered on open repugnance, “Master wants the daughter – has _always_ wanted the daughter. We-” the maddened expression transformed once more into that of sorrowful penitence, “we did not understand Master’s desires. Our listeners could not understand Master’s words. It was always the daughter, we see now. Warm flesh and fresh power and the same blood… so sweet, so easy to take. So like the father, already so well-known and comfortable.”

I was thereby overcome with the exigent desire to take hold of Wren and physically drag her back into the daylight; to place that overdue bullet into the radical’s eye and be done with her ramblings, but it was too late for any action that would retract the damage which had just been wrought, for Wren’s scowl was dark, her expression thoughtful.

“The father? No. The Crawler had Walter. Wh-” Sparkling eyes rose to mine and whatever expression I had failed to hide brought on a shock to hers that she did not bother to disguise. “What is it?” The whisper was skeptical, and yet at the same time utterly aware.

It was too late to lie or feign ignorance, I understood, lowering my pistol with a heart sickening dread. Wren knew, even if she did not yet fully comprehend what it was she had realized; she knew that I had knowledge she did not, and had withheld it from her intentionally. Keeping Theresa’s secrets from her now was no longer possible, and with a deep, shuddering breath I gave in to the inevitable, more fearful now than I had been upon discovering my hand inside the jaws of a balverine.

“Theresa told me,” I admitted guiltily, unable to meet Wren’s eyes in those first moments. “I… she said if you knew now we would fail. I was going to make her tell you – or tell you myself when this was all over – I swear it. Especially now that Walter isn’t – _Balls._ Lord Eugene… wasn’t your father. Walter was.”

“Walter?” Wren’s gaze slipped down to the mumbling fool still gripped between her fingers and for a moment I found myself concerned that she had also slipped into idiocy for the vacant stare her eyes held. “Walter?” The nutter went on again as though she never heard Wren’s inquiry, and still Wren fought for a stable foundation upon which to lay this latest revelation. “Walter was my father?”

“The father…” the damned creature hunched before her mewled, her head bobbing in acquiescence as she rocked, lending to the impression that she might topple over at any moment, “the father and the daughter…”

“Wren?” I reached down to rest a hand upon her shoulder, hoping to draw her mind back to the here and now of things. “Look, I can’t begin to understand-”

“Understand?” Wren barked, awareness returning to her like the crack of a whip, and no less violently as she ripped free of my grasp. “What is there to understand? My mentor – my best friend – was my father! And I butchered him! Because it was easier than trying to save him!”

“Be reasonable – you didn’t have much of a choice! You-” The words choked in my throat like splintered wood beneath the skin; for two years ago she had indeed been given no choice but to kill Walter if she was to save Albion.

And had Theresa not told me just two short days ago that I’d be the next to make such a choice?

_No. Never. I couldn’t…_

… _could I?_

What if it did in fact come down to Wren’s death or watching all of Albion suffer and die at her hand? Would Wren begrudge me in her eternal damnation for allowing her to succumb to such a fate?

“ _What would you do if it was your mother? Would you just stand here and wait for someone else to save her from becoming something so terrible? Would you abandon her to that fate?”_

What if it wasn’t my mother – what if it was Wren?

_Could I?_

“He knew it, didn’t he?” Wren’s ravings grew increasingly hysterical, her eyes glassier with every word she spoke. “Why else could I do no wrong in his eyes? Why else was he always telling me how proud he was of me – risking everything to save me? He knew! Bloody hell, _my father loved me and I murdered him_!”

In my abhorrence with myself for my uncertainty, and for compounding a guilt I knew already riddled her soul and haunted her dreams, I lashed out at the one person who deserved my wrath the least.

“Look, what’s done is done and you can’t change it. So you can either sit here and wallow if you think it will help, or you can get up off your ass and make Walter’s death mean something!”

I had no answers, of course; nothing that would absolve her guilt and provide fresh insight on how to view such an abhorrent act as anything less than the tragedy it was. I had no better option laying at my feet this moment, for that matter, and now that option began to seem all the more real to me; a fact that had me wishing I had eaten something recently, so that I could retch it up, the urge to gag barely stifled as I clenched my teeth in misdirected hostility.

Wren however seemed able to glean something useful from my outburst for, after a short interval of pinching her eyes behind gloved fingers as she struggled for composure, she nodded and rose to her feet; her face tightening in a supreme effort to master herself before finally succeeding. For a silent moment she peered down at the madwoman still huddled upon the stone floor muttering supplications to her accursed deity.

“Let’s go,” my companion murmured at last in a voice fissured from her residual despair, stepping deeper into the shadows, “I can’t do anything worse to that one then what’s already been done.”

I was overcome with the desire to draw my heart’s treasure to me, to repair the pain my confession had laid upon her either through embrace or by letting her bestow upon me a sound and bloody thrashing I was not altogether convinced I did not deserve, yet to do so would have undoubtedly unmade the carefully constructed self-possession she had adapted once more, and it was vitally important she be allowed to maintain her grasp on reason, especially here of all places.

With a final look at the creature beside me a surge of hatred for the thing and the disaster she had bequeathed us welled within me, and without pausing to consider my actions further I lifted Briar’s Blaster once more, releasing the deafening crack of gunfire into the corridor that sent the mad figure crumpling to the ground at my boots; Wren gauging me with a quizzical stare whilst I returned pistol to holster. “Maybe you couldn’t do worse, but she’d have if given half a chance,” I muttered and waited for Wren to tip her head in agreement before I finally moved further into the ruin on the heels of the strongest person I’d ever known, Heroic status notwithstanding.

  


XXXX

  


As we ventured deeper into the bowels of the wayward shrine we found the stone floor littered with fresh corpses; dozens of them, all contorted as the first and in some cases crawling with skittering black insects that made us shudder in revulsion as we passed, providing the same impression that the final moments of these conspirators had been a hellish nightmare which only death could have saved them from. At the very least, it appeared that Page’s concerns about finding resistance with the Crawler’s sycophants were put to rest.

“Seems I might have done that nutter a favor after all.” I murmured, n sot at the front was the lucky one,"al moments had been an agony I for one was grateful not to know.

instantly regretting the statement for the way my voice reverberated against the stone walls like the claxon toll of bells, and for what it must have implied about Walter’s final moments of life. Thankfully if Wren made the connection she held her tongue, barely affording one particular gruesome scene of scarab carnage an absent glance as we passed them and only pausing at junctions in which she needed to stop and peer about as she attempted to recall the way to what she called the Crawler’s room. It was not so much a long walk as it was tedious and nerve rattling. Wind hissed through the sand blanketing the paths, creating the impression of a dry voice whispering unintelligibly to us from within the gloom. It was enough to restore the gooseflesh to my skin at I began to fear that I was allowing my imagination to run wild when I distinctly heard my name in the rasping breeze, only to see Wren twist and peer at me through terror filled eyes.

“Have I spoken your name since we came in here?” She whispered urgently and, aware that I had not been imagining things in my unease with this place, I struggled to recall our earlier exchange as the wind hissed through the sands once again, this time sighing my surname as well and setting my spine aflame with the warning of danger. My pistol was clenched in a white-knuckled grip before I registered that I had extracted it from the holster once again; my gauntlet whirling with energies waiting to be expelled in the name of self-preservation.

“It’s in our heads,” Wren’s voice quavered in unabashed fear, her eyes rolling wildly about; one hand conjuring a fireball large enough to set herself ablaze if she did not maintain proper control, the other hand stirring winds that sent sparks from her flame gauntlet sizzling and her stray hairs whipping into a frenzy about her face.

“Easy pal,” I murmured, setting a steadier hand upon her shoulder than I would have thought I could possess at that moment. “You knew this was coming, right? We -” Recognizing immediately the opportunity I was being presented with, and never having been one to pass on the chance to capitalize on a situation when the odds were so heavily weighing in my favor, I pushed my luck with a long-suffering sigh. “Look. If you want to turn back now, pal, just say the word.”

Silver eyes gleamed at me in near panic, and it was clear to me that all it would take would be the proper motivation to set her running for the entrance without a backward glance. “Are you saying we turn and leave?”

A steadying breath was required as I listened to the sands call for me repeatedly in the blackness beyond our feeble torchlight. It was a game to this creature; a ploy to force me into abandoning Wren to its devices, I was certain. “Get out of here. I’ll go on myself. I can do this; we both know it’s you the thing is really after.”

“This has nothing to do with who it wants,” she whispered in turn, her expression cooling to something that, while still fearful, now possessed a degree of certainty she’d not held only a moment ago. “I’ll not leave you here to face it alone. Not you. Not ever. I’m going with you.”

The corridors sighed for me again and from all approaches, presently indiscernible words surrounding my name that I was certain I would soon be fervently longing I still could not understand; the temptation to turn and flee gripped me soundly for the first time in so long that the sensation nearly paralyzed me; for never in my life had I balked from any obstacle, no matter how suicidal holding my ground might have been. It was only when I realized that even if we retreated now, sooner or later the creature would come for Wren, that I found the strength to hold fast. The mad fanatic at the entrance to the temple had said it plainly enough; the Crawler wanted Wren, and Wren alone. Someday it would come for her, and perhaps then it would be stronger. Perhaps only now would I be strong enough to defeat the fiend.

No, there was no better time than the present, I knew. Only one puzzle remained: how to safeguard the object of my adoration once the Crawler had been brought to heel?

Never one for successful forethought or planning, I understood then that no amount of ruminating would find me the answer I so desperately sought. True to my nature and general run of luck, it would be through impulse and actions alone that I would find her salvation…

…If I was fortunate to find it at all.

With a tip of my head I gestured towards the sightless corridors before us and suppressed a shiver as a cackle that could have come from dried leaves once more called for me.

“Together then.”

 

XXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forever, one month and seventeen days too long to post. And I had no better excuse than one of my two usual fall backs: life got in the way. I had wanted to include more action, but looking forward that would have made this chapter far too long. Then again, it’s just like the Crawler to screw with your head before he kills you. Right? ;o)


	12. In Which the Battle for a World Is Fought

At last I came possess a degree of Wren’s apprehension at the notion of journeying into the macabre home of the unholy, which proved to be a test of our mental fortitude more than anything; for with every step we took the dead whispers called out to me and skittering figures darker than the shadows in which they lurked tormented us with the hints of their presence. Had it not been for the words of an aged gipsy seer, and the woman beside me who kept such close proximity that her shoulder touched mine with every other stride, I would have no doubt declared the expedition a madman’s folly and retreated to call for the army that would have come had we only hinted at a need.

Yet Theresa’s proclamations were clear; an army would serve no purpose beyond diversion this time, and had I any doubt of that before, the twisted corpses which littered the stone corridors were proof enough to back her warning. Common men were of little use to the creature we pursued, and were discarded as soon as their limited efficacy had run dry; it would have been immoral at best to bring men here so that we might pave our path with their bodies. Wren was the prize the Crawler truly sought, and by my own stubborn tenacity to remain by her side I had thus far fended off the panic that the dead calls threatened to pull from me with every step, as well as the unseen, unimaginable demise that no doubt would immediately follow the moment of my retreat. Still, at one particularly volatile hiss, Wren shuddered beside me.

“Easy pal,” I assured in a tone as consciously controlled as I’d ever had to muster. “It’s just words, for the most part. Bluster, really. As long as we keep a level head we’ve nothing to worry about.”

For a moment my erstwhile lover appraised me in silence before at last nodding her accord. “Right.” She murmured, her fingers barely having to stretch to graze my shirtsleeve before stepping away so that she could slowly pace the expanse of the intersection we presently found ourselves standing in, scowling as she gazed about. “I think… I think we turn here…”

It was instinct alone that drove me to draw pistol and fire when a presence brushed my leg while Wren still stood out of arm’s reach, with two more shots and a string of obscenities coarse enough to belong of a brigand ship’s deck reverberating within the stone walls before the physical embodiment of shadow faded back into nothingness; orange light belatedly throbbing to life in Wren’s palm, illuminating the corridor and proving we were once more alone.

“What is it!?”

“It’s all right,” I croaked, finding it all the more difficult to steady my nerves this time, “just some little scamp come to pay a visit.” The orange light doused, returning us once more to the glow of my torch and Wren’s will markings as she resumed to sentinel’s position at my side, one hand gripping my shoulder briefly as though to assure herself that I was still there; such luminescence of our remaining light source hardly sufficient now in my opinion, and yet it would have proven wasteful and fruitless to strike up more than one of our torches.

“It’s this way,” Wren’s arm stretched out to point down one of the dark corridors, “stay close. We’re nearly there.”

At this I was at last able to bark a quiet chortle, a sound that caused one of Wren’s brows to arch. “So warns the one with a penchant for wandering off on her own.” I chuckled, and the scowl that so often accompanied that arched brow made itself known.

“It’s not me that’s being threatened here,” her tone was as dark and foreboding as our surroundings, “it’ll come for you if we give it the opportunity.”

“Ah yes, you do know exactly what to say to put a bloke at ease, don’t you?” I sighed as much in resignation of per poor mood as to steady my nerves once again. “Come on then, let’s go pay our respects to our host.”

  


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Despite Wren’s assurance that we were close, it seemed that hours may have passed as we trekked through the bleak passages and subterranean cliff sides, all the while aware that just beyond the light of our torches things not quite unseen skulked and slunk in the shadows, before we entered a chamber in which Wren drew up short, her hand coming to grip my wrist so violently she might have shattered the bones within had I not latched onto her fingers to pry them loose with my newly acquired fortitude.

She said nothing, and in point of fact no words were needed by her to inform me of the reason for her silent alarm; the expansive hall littered with the corpses of twenty-odd black cloaked figures and possessing a dais at the far end flanked by a half-dozen sentinels and twice-over that many suits of hollow armor was all the confirmation I required:

We had arrived.

Amidst the ruined magnificence and grizzly carnage of our surroundings stood a creature atop the raised platform before us, if one can refer to a reanimated corpse as a ‘creature’; a skeletal figure draped in the velvets and satins befitting Albion’s royalty, garbled hisses and guttural sounds grating from the fleshless mouth, barely audible beneath the ever present whispers which had suddenly increased in volume if not coherency upon our arrival. Atop the corpse’s skull a crown rested amidst the remains of what must have at one time been an impressive head of chestnut hair, the Heroes’ insignia clearly engraved upon a polished gold surface even at this distance.

Wren’s will markings blazed anew, casting brilliant blue light and thusly harsh shadows at our every direction.

“My… _mother_ …” her voice was a whisper as cold and hard as I had ever heard her emit, “Walter… now mother… I swear… I will see you pay for their abuse this day!”

Bare teeth parted so that the strange rattling sound could pass as one boney hand reached back and drew a blade as well known and revered in Albion as the one who wielded it – Harbinger has returned to battle once more, still slick with the gore of the Crawler’s slain followers; the lucky ones, I was certain.

Wings of ethereal light blossomed into being as the woman at my side charged into action, meeting a hollowman the likes of which had undoubtedly not walked the lands of Albion or beyond in recorded history, and at her movement the sentinels flared to life one and all, drawing from me a muttered obscenity one should never utter in the presence of royalty, for it was clear to me what my task was to be as Wren threw herself at the corpse of her mother with single-minded and perhaps even slightly maniacal determination, and if I am honest with you now, I was not all that certain that I was yet up for such a task.

My Swift Irregular rolled over my shoulder with such ease of movement despite my moment of apprehension that it felt more an extension of my arm than a separate weapon, leaving my left hand free to pull Briar’s Blaster from its holster as I emptied the contents of my rifle into the head of the first monstrosity before, by some manner of luck I could not fathom, finishing it with my revolver. Firing off a rifle in such a cavalier fashion had never been something I’d felt comfortable attempting for its likelihood for causing injury beyond the target, and yet now to hold the rifle even in one hand was as easy as holding out my own unburdened arm.

Five beasts left and two empty firearms proved the product of the first fifteen seconds of my portion of the battle while the remaining fiends descended from their pedestals towards me; dependable as my rifle may be, in this fight I would need speed more than anything, and my Swift Irregular was reluctantly returned to its place at my back.

“All right, quick and dirty it is, then. Pal, your gun!?”

Already involved with the enemy we’d come to face, Wren’s free hand ceased its fiery glow long enough to wrench Chickenbane from its holster and lob it at me, immediately launching a small barrage of fireballs at the monster I’d waged war against while her blade kept her mother’s corpse at bay; truly to watch the woman’s abilities in combat was to forget that there had once been a time when she had been Albion’s pampered and sheltered darling.

The grip of her gun found my palm and the first shot was fired off before the recoil from landing the weapon had stilled, and with near perfect timing Chickenbane’s report was ripping through the air as the remaining echoes of Briar’s Blaster’s final shot died, my smoking pistol scorching leather as I holstered it too soon so that my teeth could unseal the first pouch of powder as I continued to empty Chickenbane into the black maw where my current adversary’s face should have been.

With Wren’s help the husks of two Sentinels now lay where they had lumbered down from their posts and I was reloading my pistols to the sounds of swordplay and explosions emanating from halfway across the chamber. Whatever fear I had known before this moment was gone; vanished with the whispers that were now obliterated beneath the din of conflict.

Ah yes, there was nothing like a good battle to put things right again, if only within your own head.

Unaware of the black pool that had formed at my feet in the dank cavern that was the Crawler’s own sanctuary, violet energy flared up to my left as my first emptied powder reserve fell to my feet, and I had only enough time to throw myself to one side before the ground where I had just stood erupted in a geyser of dark oil and magic; and only then did the briefest glimmer of my previous trepidation resurface, only to be stamped down immediately by the need to act. Recalling that these creatures needed a moment to recharge between attacks, I completed my reload of my pistol and turned my attention elsewhere and fired off twin volleys of bullets into the sentinel nearest to where Wren battled her mother’s corpse. Yet even as I launched into a new attack the ground at my feet began to bubble with the rank substance once more, and I was forced to abandon my offensive to dodge yet another attack. Successful as my start had been, there were still four to my one and, with her own battle intensifying, Wren was unavailable to pull my hide from the fire this time.

“All right, Finn, time to test your Hero metal!”

Relying on firepower alone would not save us, for there would be no time to stop to reload my trusted weapons until my foes numbers had been cut down, and it was with great reluctance that I holstered Briar’s Blaster and shoved Chickenbane into my belt when at last they ran empty.

Still, despite my affinity for firearms there was always a certain thrill to be had when my sword sang free of its scabbard, for Wreckager was by no means standard issue for Albion’s army and the Major, who had no doubt intentionally failed to question me how I’d come to have such a blade upon my recruitment, had thereby never found reason to part me from it when I took up the uniform.

Though my swordplay was by no means the dancing art form Wren could play out in a fight, my blade was nevertheless able to strike golden armor with a fair amount of achievement, as I sought out imperfections and seams that could be exploited to shatter the suit and thusly the thing within. Fortunately the end result was faster in coming than I had planned, for that familiar burbling slur appeared beneath me once again and, being lighter on my feet than my nemesis, I successfully dodged the attack that followed where the sentinel I had been embroiled with did not fare as well. Armor clattered across the stone floor in every direction and I turned to wink my appreciation to the monster that had just completed the deed on my behalf, only to wonder for a moment if it was possible to provoke these creatures as one would a human.

There it was that I decided close-combat would be my advantage for once; for the sentinels seemed to hold none of the apprehension for collateral damage that Wren and I faced, and to that end had no qualms about attacking me even if one of their own stood within range as well. Without hesitation I moved off to the next closest fiend, setting loose a Force Push volley to keep the monsters from drawing too near to Wren as well as to keep their attentions focused on me. The effect was instantaneous, and three golden bodies were hulking with slow, thunderous steps in my direction. One creature lifted its strange scepter and pain laced my arms and back as I instinctually threw my arms protectively over my head and neck while shards of light rained down upon me, slicing fabric and flesh alike.

_Bloody hell, I forgot about that one!_

Wrenching a red vial free from my pack I pitched the contents down my throat, for once unaware of the vile taste as I cast the emptied receptacle aside and moved in to the closest sentinel to begin my next assault, easily dodging as the creature swung at me with the massive staff and returning to sunder the strange circular emblem upon its chest.

Said massive staff struck the ground between us and the world dissolved in a white purple light which blinded me to everything and yet still allowed me to experience the pain of something cold and hard striking my back and head, knocking the breath from my lungs, which was almost immediately followed by a much more concentrated yet no less forcible blow to my abdominal region; a flow of coppery warmth filling my mouth and further cutting off my air supply.

Sensing that my doom was upon me if I did not act immediately, I set loose Force Push blindly into the air above me, for I was at least certain that I was lying on my back; unable to pull air into my lungs to give Wren warning of my actions, should she be nearby. Blinking madly in a vain attempt to erase the effects of the attack upon my eyes, and spitting blood upon the floor beside my head, I swung my arm round and aimed at a scraping sound to my left; the sound too heavy and ungainly to be Wren. As I fended off my attackers with Will and a great deal of undignified rolling around upon the ground to avoid the disgusting puddles that would sometimes spring up beneath me, I was assaulted by the sounds of explosions thundering nearby, making it impossible for me to listen for where my aggressors were standing as I waited with barbed anticipation for the moment when shapes were once again discernible in the murk of my vision, then colors, before at last my vision returned enough so that I could aim with precision at my aggressors and allow myself the opportunity to rise from the floor and give them a taste of Wreckager once more.

“You all right?!” Wren’s voice brought about an end to the explosions and I realized from the charred sections of flooring and the equally scorched body of a fourth sentinel not far from where I had fallen that Wren had been fighting both of our battles while I had been sightless.

“Oh, just bloody fantastic, for a man with less brain matter than a hollow man.” I grumbled tersely, swallowing the contents of another red vial while fighting for the mastery to not retch it up before it would work its miracles. Feeling the sharp stabbing pains within my stomach ebb as the potion took effect, I was left only with the annoyance of one who knew he had bungled his duty badly, and in my aggravation I lashed out with Wreckager at the nearest sentinel, conscious to knock its staff aside before it could strike the ground between us, all the while dancing out of those puddles and light rains that the monsters could summon at will, though I was certain that my dance was nowhere near as graceful as Wren’s.

“Good. Stay on your feet this time.”

“Novel idea, that is. Think I might just give it a go.” And with a final, vicious stroke the front of my foes armor split open; the creature tumbling to the ground in pieces as its existence unraveled thanks in no small part to the attacks its counterpart had contributed in its attempts to thwart me.

With only one sentinel left I paused long enough to reload both pistols, holding the monster at bay with well-timed Force Push spells and a fair about of running about like a chicken purposed for the butcher’s block to avoid its ranged attacks, for it was a certainty that I’d had quite enough of fighting these things in close quarters. With both pistols loaded I unleashed the fury of my preferred craft upon my final nemesis, mindful of the attacks it launched at me from a distance. Without Wren’s aid I was forced to pause and reload a second time before bringing the shadow being to its inglorious end, and was at last able to turn my full attention to my comrade and her struggle. Despite having witnessed Wren in battle first hand on numerous occasions, this was a scene to behold above all others, and not one I’d soon forget.

The cacophony of steel on steel shattered the silence of the tomb and seemed to be attempting to split my skull from within, yet by some miracle performed by the smiths who forged those legendary blades neither weapon shattered upon impact. Wren’s markings flared, wings of blue-silver light casting sharp shadows through the chamber while beyond her blade the creature concealed within the Hero Queen of Old pushed its assault, the Will markings upon her desiccated face and limbs an inky stain that seemed to absorb light rather than emit it while tendrils of black smoke oozed from the body, only to recoil and find their way back.

In its own wraithlike way the Crawler was slowly bleeding itself out; unable to master the body it now inhabited while said body was slowly crushed from without. Whatever advantage it should have held over Wren in possessing the body of a superior Hero was lost to its inability to fully fuse itself into its assumed form. Only Wren would suit the Crawler’s needs now, but first it needed to bring her to heal, for at her peak strength, and in the midst a full-out tirade, the young Hero Queen was not likely to fall to the Crawler’s machinations easily.

Yet that did not mean that the creature was without hope of victory. In a flurry of motion that I was confident common men could not follow, Harbinger collided with Casanova in strike after strike, flourish after flourish that bespoke of an underlying strength and skill in both combatants. Yet in direct defiance of both Theresa and Wren’s admissions that the elder had been more powerful than the child, Wren never lost an inch of ground, pressing her attack with a confidence I had been dubious she would be able to possess against the likes of her mother.

As lightening flared in the dead woman’s hand it became apparent that my involvement in this battle might be prudent, and with that I took up my trusted Swift Irregular once more, finding it nearly pathetically easy to take aim at the crackling palm, to account for her movements and Wren’s as though in an afterthought, before at last squeezing the trigger. Bullet cracked against bone knocking the hand away and forcing the spell to die off, though if it caused injury I could see no evidence of it. Taking aim at the creature’s head, for the blackened pits that should have held eyes seemed an unlikely weak point in this situation, I released another shot, satisfied this time to see a tiny crack form in the skull beneath the remaining clumps of hair. Without hesitation I pulled Briar’s Blaster free, opening fire upon the glorified hollow man until my powder cache was all but depleted and numerous fissures left her skull so apparently fragile it seemed a simple matter to break the thing open with my sword and be done with it.

If ever there was an opportunity to send Wren off, now was that moment. And so with less forethought than that of a hobbe I stepped between Wren and what remained of her mother, keeping my back to my companion as I resumed my offensive.

“I’m going to have to ask you to step outside now, pal. Not to worry, I’ll finish up here.”

“What?!” The shriek of indignant fury at my back should have sent me scuttling out of reach had I not already been prepared for such a reaction. “What are you talking about? Get out of the way!” My companion’s gauntleted palm lifted beside my shoulder and firmly I gripped her wrist within my unoccupied hand, feeling the cords beneath my finger bunch tensely as I pushed the appendage down, thwarting her attack.

“Look Wren,” I pleaded with as much composure as was possible for me to maintain while levying a Force Push spell against our foe, “please just… just trust me. I know that’s asking a lot considering, but-” Yet it was clear that she was not one to be easily placated, for her temper rose as she spun around me, wrenching Chickenbane from my belt and lobbing off an attack of her own.

“This is _my_ fight, Ben,” she pressed heatedly, “Mine. It took _my_ parents – not-” It was here that my ire at last won out over calm; my voice amazingly enough burying hers with a thundering resonance.

“And that’s exactly why this _can’t_ be your fight! It’s after the ‘pretty daughter’ – you! If it gets out of that body where’s the first place it’s going to go?! Now for the bloody sake of Albion, kindly extract yourself from this temple and let me finish this!”

To my everlasting dismay, my temper proved the fatal flaw in my defense, as while I concentrated so intently upon my argument with my recalcitrant friend our foe took the opportunity to capitalize on my distraction, and in the very next moment after voicing my argument to Wren I found my person plucked from the ground, hurtling through the air like so much sand in a dust storm. Unable to discern up from down, let alone friend from foe, I was reduced to curling in upon myself to protect my vitals whilst awaiting the impact I was certain to come. The whirling noise of the maelstrom which tossed me about suddenly resembled that of a woman’s furious scream, and the punishing winds which gripped me died, though not before I felt something hard strike my back, an impact which was accompanied by a startling crack I was not all together convinced had not emanated from my body. At last I came to a rest upon solid ground beneath a pillar which possessed a craterous impression midway up roughly as wide as my shoulders, leaving me suddenly all the more appreciative of my newly elevated resilience.

“Ben?!” My fellow Hero’s voice called from the nearby sounds of battle, and I quickly roused myself to my feet, albeit less than gracefully, knowing that if either of us were to land the killing blow it could not be Wren. She had to be away from here before the Old Queen’s body was no longer of any use to the Crawler.

“Thought I told you to get the bloody hell out of here!” I fumed, hefting a pulse of Force Push at the walking corpse with which the woman I held dearer than life was engaged in armed combat presently.

“You can’t fight her alone!”

“Bollocks! Get out of here and you won’t be a distraction!”

“I could say the same for you!”

“No! Dammit, you don’t understand-”

My words were suddenly rendered inconsequential when Wren’s sword collided with her mother’s head, removing the Old Queen’s crown as well as the top of her skull as cleanly as though she’d cut through a block of cheese; the whispers around us silencing with the sound of metal against bone.

With the last of its energies slipping away, the ungainly walking corpse staggered towards Wren, oily black death seeping from the remains of the skull as it emanated appalling groans and reached out for the dead woman’s daughter. As it emerged from facial orifices and opened cranium alike, oil bubbled away into smoke, the thick black cloud pouring from the withered body in great plumes – swells that sped as though propelled on storm winds for Wren. There was no time to flee, not even for one as fleet-of-foot as Wren, and with choking, gagging misery she collapsed to her knees within the dark cloud, clutching at her throat, her eyes roiling with black as though filling with the oily substance from within.

Despite my best efforts to thwart the future Theresa had foreseen, I now stood witness to the events she had confirmed would become reality; and with a sickness I was not certain mortal men should be able to survive, I understood at last that my prior shortcomings in my dealings with Wren, though grievous, could have been forgiven; could be undone with time. They had not been true failures.

Just as with my family, with Major Swift, and even with Walter to an extent, I had at last proven my inability to do right by anyone and everyone who held me dear to them.

_This_ is what it truly meant to fail everyone I had ever cared for.

  
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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop died while I was in the middle of writing it originally. Straight up fried out without hope of repair. But at least I was able to pull out the memory and download the contents of the laptop to my desktop. Thankfully you good people don't have to wait, because Chapter 13 is up now!


	13. In Which the True Measure of a Hero Is Weighed

At last it had become an unavoidable certainty – the time Theresa had foretold was transpiring before my eyes; if Wren did not die now she would become the new vessel of the Crawler, the new bane of Albion and mankind. The last of the pitch fog disappeared into her nostrils and with that the visible anatomy of her eyes vanished into black recesses, giving her a skeletal appearance; her features transforming into a nightmare similar to that of the thing that had once been her mother. The promise I had made within Walter’s crypt played out cruelly within my mind; I had vowed that I would destroy her if it came to this. I had given her my word that I would protect Albion even from her if it became necessary.

It took no longer than a single breath for me to allow Briar’s Blaster to slip from my fingers.

I was not capable of what Theresa had demanded of me; of keeping the promise I had sworn before Wren and Walter that day within his tomb; and if that branded me a coward then so be it. I could live with being a coward and a traitor, and had been branded that much and worse at various intervals throughout my life; but I would sooner allow the Crawler’s minions to rip the life from my chest before I would raise a hand to destroy Wren.

Knowing all too well that my attempts would serve no purpose, I never-the-less wrapped my arms beneath Wren’s breast, hefted her up to my side with the little strength I still held to, and began to drag her towards the ruin’s exit, all the while listening as her feet scraped and thrashed at the stone flooring we crossed over. Through turns and around corners lit at times by no more than my own flickering Will markings I backtracked through the maze of pathways with the one person who mean more to me than life slowing stilling within my arms; the shadow creatures that had stalked us throughout our trip into the temple no longer present at our backs, for there would be no need to guard against their own master.

“Come on, pal,” I panted more from terror for the one I spoke to than exertion, “that’s the way. Look, see that light? It’s midday out there. Come on now. We’ll get you out into the sun and everything’ll be fine. You hear me? Everything’ll be fine.”

Not more than ten paces from the portal which lead into the desert – only four paces into the brilliant rays of sunlight which had successfully infiltrated the ruins and had me blinking rapidly at their radiance – Wren’s thrashing and the corresponding terrible choking ceased, replaced by an disquieting stillness and a terrible hissing breath, comparable to the noises the corpse of the old queen had emitted and sounding as ominous as death itself.

With that I knew that time had run out; Wren would find no salvation in the brilliance of full daylight, and so it was that I did the only thing that held any semblance of logic to my absurd and desperate sense of reason.

Without consideration for the ramifications of my actions, I dropped the pair of us our knees and clutched the back of Wren’s neck, tipping her newly horrific face up to mine before sealing my mouth over hers; a trick I’d learned from seafarers during my years aboard various ships. If a man was to fall into the sea and find himself at death’s door, a fellow could force air into the drown man’s lungs again and revive him, if one did not mind the close contact it required. And thus my frantic use of reason dictated that if applied in the reverse it would pull the breath from Wren’s lungs, along with whatever noxious vapors might pollute that breath.

It never once occurred to me during my anxious plotting that I would be taking the darkness into myself; that this almost certainly meant my death, and only if I was lucky. Looking back, if it had, I cannot say for certain it would have impacted my decision.

I inhaled the contents of her lungs as deeply as I could, feeling the burning smoke scald my windpipe, abrading my insides like metal shavings on candle wax. The effect was instantaneous. Gouts of blackness clouded the edges of my vision and howls of rage echoed within my mind while I paused only long enough to exhale through my nose before pulling at the essence deeply once more. Clawing fingers raked at my already abraded back as Wren fought to either hold to me or escape my embrace, her voice rising in a muffled scream whenever I was not overruling the use of her airways, yet I was now a Hero as well; capable of enduring her enfeebled assault while I focused instead on the war I currently fought within.

The world grew darker around me, as the blinding clouds at the edges of my sight snaked across my eyes, stealing the light from my vision and from my heart. In the depths of my mind whispers darker than the ones we’d heard in the corridors and rougher in tone called faintly for things I could not, nor wanted to understand. I gagged on another lungful of the burning agony, returned to Wren’s mouth to drink of my death again, and listened as the whispers reciting my life’s greatest failures and promising my eternal suffering became clearer and clearer.

To spare her from the darkness I would take it into myself, for if I could never again do right by her, I would at least do this. And as I spiraled further and further into the darkness that now signified more than simply the illumination of our surroundings one fact went with me: because the voice was here in my head it could not be in hers. Wren’s shrieking had subsided, or at least I could no longer hear it beyond the noise reverberating within my mind. I clung to that fact as, with the last of my physical awareness, I ground my teeth to hers beneath our lips and took one final conscious pull from her lungs.

A scream more terrifying than any I’d ever heard in life echoed against the insides of my skull, shattering cognizant thought and deafening me to everything beyond the wail. The face I once beheld drawn in charcoal in the pages of an ancient Auroran text now filled my thoughts and blocked out my sight, its mouth open impossibly wide as it wailed; and if I screamed in response I could not hear. Terror racked my soul as the reality of my situation began to sink in, and yet one thought and one alone kept me anchored – Wren was not seeing this, nor would she ever again. I clung to this fact like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam, waiting for the wailing in my mind to fade to nothingness and take my soul with it; waiting for an end to my existence of some sort, hoping only that Wren would be braver than I and do what must be done if the need arose.

My last lucid thought before I was lost to that fervently welcomed nothingness was one I hoped that somehow, somewhere, my old friend would hear.

_I did it, Wally. Our girl’s safe now._

  


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When next my eyes opened I found myself perplexed at how I had come to find myself in this situation; my mind, hazy and rattled though it might have been, was still somehow able to discern the fact that for whatever reason I should not be where I was.

Equally disquieting was that I seemed to be no more than a spectator, my body moving of its own accord in motions that seemed both natural and quite familiar to me, yet were not consciously being performed, until at last I understood: I was within my memories, experiencing them in the first hand and with such clarity as I never had before. With that understanding came the remembrance of my last purposeful action prior to finding myself here, and I wondered briefly if this was what became of one when they passed into the hereafter.

Had Wren completed the fete I’d been unwilling to carry out myself? I ardently hoped that was the case; for if it was, and this was how I was to spend my eternity, I could think of worse memories to be locked within.

From beneath my chin a head of chestnut hair stirred, a feminine voice moaned languorously, and I found my hand moving to push the strands back from the face beneath, alabaster fingers lifting to cover my own.

A face more dear to me than life itself tilted up to gaze at me in obvious wonder, and I could not tell if the constricting pressure of my heart was the reenactment of the memory, or my natural inbound reaction to seeing that face gaze at me again in such a way.

I watched as my rough fingers brushed her hair from her temples, threading through the silken mass without a care for much anything beyond the woman within whose arms I currently found myself entangled. My breath escaped in a contented sigh and my lips brushed against her brow in what had then been an impulsive and thoughtless show of affection, and what now seemed an all too brief display of the great care I held for her.

She smiled at me and I try though I might have, I could not deny the truth – it was beauty incarnate; that smile. Though I’d never been one to fault a woman her physical shortcomings, there was no denying that Wren’s mouth was a touch too large and her brow a bit too masculine for her face. Still, when she smiled it was like witnessing the painting of a masterpiece come to life. It brought everything into proportion – as though she had been crafted to be the most radiant creature alive when she smiled.

The expression she wore was one of pure delight; I’d only ever seen such blissful abandon in her a handful of times and reveled in it here; for here I alone gave this joy to her. She wriggled away from me, one naked shoulder tangling her in the silk sheets to prevent further escape, ringing peals of laughter set loose when my fingers flitted over her exposed middle beneath the covers. Long chestnut strands caught against my unshaven chin and I could not resist a low chuckle of my own as they brushed feather soft trails against my neck.

She writhed beneath my touch, twisting back to press her bare skin against mine and shield her stomach from the tickling torment of my fingers. Wild laughter subsided to contented chuckles and she lifted her eyes to meet my gaze once more as I wrapped my arms about her once more. Her fingers lifted to comb through the hairs upon my chest, our legs twining together possessively as I recalled how I had readily and eagerly I had succumbed to her touch once more, dismissing the notion of departing her bed at this point, as had previously been the natural conclusion to such encounters throughout my life.

It was a memory cherished more than any other, and regretted more than any other. For in this moment I could have told her of the emotion that threatened to burst my heart with its strength; the sentiment that was so evident in her eyes just then there was no doubt that I’d have received her confession in turn. Here she had not been a queen or an indomitable Hero. Here in my arms she had been delicate, vulnerable; the most beloved treasure the world held for me.

Here is where I should have told her that I loved her, should have set our differences in station aside and chosen to stay with her… and didn’t. For beneath the rapture that currently suffused every part of my being lay a panic, a terrible self-doubt that would creep into my mind as the hours stretched on; a voice that would remind me she was beyond my reach, and I had no right to stay and ask her to settle for the likes of me, desperately though I may have wished it. It had been a fear that would eventually drive me from her bed in the middle of the night; thoughtless to the impact such actions would have upon her until days later when I was well out to sea and beyond hope of retracting the hurt I had inflicted upon her.

_I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, love_ , I wished to tell the adoring face that could not respond, for I had only regarded her with silent wonder when creating this memory two years prior. And though it would not undo the hurt she had experienced at my thoughtless retreat or the set right the loss that had been suffered as a result of our time together…

There were worse things to fear than the love of this woman; I knew this now.

I watched my fingers rise up to tap her nose gently. “Get some sleep.” I heard my voice say softly, as I had instructed that night and the dazzling smile upon her face dimmed only slightly while she stretched up to press soft lips to mine before obeying. Silver eyes lidded as she shifted against me so that she might press her ear to my chest contentedly, and in very little time her breathing had slowed and softened peacefully. It had been here that the creeping doubt had at last taken hold, preventing me from joining Wren in her slumber as it wormed its way deeper into my thoughts before at last driving me into heartless action; and yet now the world around me faded away as though I too were drifting off to sleep. Had I the ability to hold to my senses no doubt this would have perplexed me, yet much as with dozing off in life my mind clouded contentedly and I was only minimally aware of the sound of my name as a voice called out to me, far, far beyond the darkness of my oblivion.

  


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It occurred to me in a strange, disjointed way of thought that my back was uncomfortably hot where I lay, stinging in more places than I wanted to contemplate as the light from some yet unseen source penetrated my eyelids, blinding me to all but the thin silhouette which hovered over me when I at last made the attempt to open my eyes and discern my surroundings.

“Typical man,” a familiar voice choked in a manner that had my insides constricting immediately, though I did not quite understand why, “needing a nap after every little chore.” Fine tremors traveled up my arm from the hands which grasped my fingers as Wren’s form at last emerged from the shadow that fell between my eyes and the sun, and I was finally able to see her clearly and understand what it was that disturbed me, for her eyes sparkled with something more than Will or mischief. There were tears in those crystalline eyes, perched upon the tips of her lashes as though waiting for their cue to drop.

“I remember this,” I croaked through the remains of what could only have been an acidic burn to my throat, “only last time you were the lay about and I the dashing rescuer.”

“You still are the dashing rescuer,” Wren breathed. “How did you do that, Ben?”

“What, pass out? Fairly simple really, just do something incredibly stupid-”

“You pulled the Crawler out into the light.” She whispered. “I could feel it sinking into me like a stain, and then it was gone, and you were in my arms, retching the thing onto the ground like it was the ale you overindulged in the night before. It burned away like fog does with the sunrise. How did you know…”

It was becoming easier to think, and the appropriate retort was upon my tongue with only the most marginal of delays. “Well, every proper Hero needs a heroic deed to be remembered for, right? I suppose this was mine.” But Wren wasn’t laughing and as much as she was quizzical, while I could not bear to speak the specifics and make them real again. The thought of ending her life stung as fiercely in that moment as the night Theresa had told me it would be the only way. Instead I shrugged her question off, supplying only a part of the answer she sought. “It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.”

“And probably the first one that actually worked.” A crisp and all too familiar voice added behind me as Page moved into my line of sight; yet where before she had been all steel and ice now she seemed softer, a bit more like the woman whom I had mourned before late one night not long ago.

“Well it was bound to happen eventually.” I drawled, coughing slightly at the discomfort in my throat as Page leaned down to press a flask to my lips so that I could wash some of the burn away. “Where did you come from?” I managed once she allowed me to speak again.

“Be reasonable,” Page chaffed, “did you really believe we’d just let you go off without a decent backing? You’re lucky you came out when you did – we were just about ready to come in after you.”

“We?”

“Aye,” another voice intoned with a touch more annoyance from beyond Page’s back, “ _we_.” With that single word I knew that Morris had brought with him the whole of the Swift Brigade, and felt not a touch of surprise at the revelation. “You know damned well it wasn’t supposed to be me leading this pack; it was supposed to be you. So, when it was clear you weren’t coming to lead _us_ , we decided to come follow _you_.”

With that I attempted a chuckle that resembled a cough more than mirth. “Serves me right for being so charismatic and inspiring, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes, that must be it.” Wren warbled a laugh of her own as she bent low to pull my head up slightly and offer me another drink from Page’s water flask.

Dark locks slipped loose of their bindings behind Wren’s head, hanging close to my cheek; and like a cat with a piece of twine I found myself compelled to reach up and toy with them, wrapping the long strands around my fingers without a care for the spectacle I must have been creating before our comrades with my informality as I brushed a thumb over the silken texture in my grip. When none of my former disquiet returned at the intimacy of my gesture it failed to raise any wonder within me.

There were worse things to fear than the love of this woman, after all.

“So… I’m not exactly what you would call someone with an instinct for social cues; you know that, don’t you?” I asked of the woman above me, who quirked a brow at me in confusion, and so I elaborated. “Well here’s a prime example. I love you, Wren. I’ve loved you since the rebellion; since you fired off that first volley at the mortar and then grinned like an idiot after. Only I was stupid back then, and maybe even scared. No… no not maybe – definitely. It’s just that… it was all so overwhelming. Like I was drowning; and I was going to ruin everything. I mean, what chance did a soldier have of winning a queen?”

Wren sniffed at her unshed tears and barked another quavering laugh. “I don’t know. Probably fairly good – take my mother for example.”

“Yeah, but that was Walter and – let’s be honest – I’m no Walter.”

“No, you’re not.” Tight fists pressed my hand to her breast possessively. “You’re Captain Benjamin Finn; the bravest, most devilishly handsome man I’ve ever known.”

“Brave and handsome, eh? Is that all?”

“Would it make you happier if I told you that I’m madly in love with you?”

“It might.” I tried to swallow and found my throat incapable of the act. “Are you?”

Another weak laugh trembled forth from her chest and Wren bent closer to me, brushing her hair from my forehead and resting a surprisingly cool touch to my cheek.

“Shut up, Ben.” She murmured, before pressing her lips to mine at long last.

And it was then that I experienced something akin to the first time I had donned my gauntlet and recognized the power of Will within me; so utterly familiar and natural, yet never known to me before that moment. In Wren’s lips I felt something I’d never before known in my life, something I’d not allowed myself to experience during our last encounter, yet was now able to define with a word that I’d previously found impossible to associate any point of my life with.

Here, in Wren’s lips, and in her arms-

I was _home_.

  


XXXX

  


It was four days after our fateful battle against the return of the darkness, as Wren and I made our way to the ship that would take ourselves, our friends, and our precious cargo of deceased loved ones from Aurora to Industrial, that a flash on non-light I’d grown to acknowledge with an almost blasé regard erased the color from Albion and arrested all movement, save for woman at my side. Wren gazed at me, seemingly as puzzled by my animation as I was with hers; past experience taught us that such encounters were reserved for only one Hero at a time, and yet here we two stood, vibrant and mobile. At last I shrugged.

“She must have run out of secrets,” I replied with feigned indifference, to which she smirked. Before a swirling portal the old gypsy woman emerged and, like a child fearing the confiscation of a prized toy, I laced my fingers through Wren’s, drawing her nearer to me. Yet the sight of the old seer drew forth not a fear of Wren’s confiscation, but an irritation which I found impossible to withhold.

“It seems as though I rewrote your prophecy,” I drawled contemptuously, earning a look of surprise from the woman at my side. Clearly she had not expected me to take the fore of this assembly, nor with such blatant disregard for the deference I had previously paid to the seer in Wren’s presence.

“You are a Hero of Albion, Captain Finn,” Theresa replied without rancor, “I would expect no less of you.”

“Then what was the point of it all?”

“Why tell you that killing Her Majesty was the only way to destroy the creature?” The fingers in my grasp jerked at the revelation I had not been able to speak myself, yet I held fast, unwilling to relinquish that which I had unwittingly waited years for as Theresa managed to maintain her firm grip on the equanimity she had mastered so thoroughly. “Because at that time, it was. I knew only the options I could see. I knew that you had to face her, and I could see her being taken. Yet the one thing I could not see was the extent you were willing to go to in order to secure her life. Some things cannot be predicted, after all.”

Somehow the seer’s admission failed to catch me by surprise. There were deeds I had long since assumed Theresa to be incapable of – even if only unconsciously. “You’ve never been willing to sacrifice yourself for another?” This above all seemed the most unlikely quality the old gypsy could possess.

“I am one who understands the need for sacrifice better than most.”

“Right. Just as long as it’s not _you_ being sacrificed.” This seemed to be too much for Wren, for she hissed my name incredulously, though instead of extracting her fingers from mine she pulled me to her even closer; a movement that brought about that strange fluttering feeling which always seemed to come from Wren performing this or that endearing act.

“There are many forms of self-sacrifice beyond simple death, Captain,” the old woman replied, as unperturbed as if my comment had been of the weather.

“Is that how we’re alive?” Wren asked quickly, her voice taking on a tremulous note that could have been fear as she tightened her hold upon my hand, “Ben was willing to _die_ for me?”

The thick fabric of the old woman’s cloak shifted as her head shook. “Not precisely. His sole intent was to take hold of the Crawler not for power, or for death, but to spare you the fate he had accepted. The tighter the creature’s hold on Captain Finn became, the more confident he was in your well-being. In the end the Crawler’s very presence within a host already too foreign to master proved to be its undoing, and left the creature with only two choices; to stay and perish in the light of hope that it was creating within The Captain, or to escape the host; though by then the creature proved too weak to possess a new body, even one as near and compatible as you, and was left to the devises of daylight unrepressed.”

“So that’s it? That’s your answer, eh? ‘Love conquers all’?” The purpose of my words had been that of a sarcastic retort but warm fingers pressed to my cheek until my head turned and I was staring into pewter eyes which glittered brightly. It was then that I noticed the slight advantage of height she’d held over me two years ago had vanished; if anything I now stood marginally over her. For a man who’d never held great physical stature, the realization was surprisingly welcomed.

“ _That’s_ why you did it – just to save me? And here I thought you knew how to destroy it all along.” The faith she had clearly misplaced with me brought about a brief battle with humility and my aggressive posture towards the old woman dissipated.

“Come on, pal.” I shrugged. “You know me – when have I ever put together a decent plan?” It was the bold truth, unfortunate though it may have been; for I’d never once been able to concoct a feasible recourse to the fate Theresa had bestowed upon Wren and I. My only success had been to somehow avoid personal annihilation while blundering my way into safeguarding the woman I loved more than life itself. Indeed I was beginning to doubt the very purpose of my time spent in Wren’s company, inflicting upon her emotional trials both old and new, when my beloved herself spoke the words that seem to place everything back in the right.

“All that time we searched for the weapon, when it didn’t even exist yet. The time we spent together… that’s what it took. We had to build the weapon ourselves.”

For of course she had the right of it; at least mostly. The weapon had existed once before, I knew. Perhaps it had all along; we had only to reawaken it. Whatever the case might have been, the outcome proved to be the same.

So it was with a quiet, bemused chuckle that I reached up towards my cheek to lay my gauntleted hand atop Wren’s. “Love conquers all.” I murmured, and this time it was my voice that was gentled with awe.

  


XXXX

  


I can say with confidence that I’d never been one who dreamed of setting precedence or altering the course of a nation, yet in recent years I’d played a part in committing both actions on multiple occasions. So it almost seemed mundane to marry Wren and thereby place two Heroes on Albion’s thrones; for of course I backed down – as one tends to do when facing off against Wren – and agreed to marry her. And surprisingly, terrified though I may have been at the prospect initially, over time the rise in stature has grown on me.

His Lordship Benjamin Finn, Hero of Albion.

As rightful heir to the throne Wren rules the kingdom, naturally, and while I suspected that I was not cut out to lead, not the way Wren could certainly, when she bestowed upon me full control of Albion’s army I knew better than to refuse her a second time. She’d insisted, stating that if she couldn’t have Major Swift as her General she wanted his most trusted officer instead. Wren had taken me back into her heart and given me a place at her side. The extraordinary act required no less than my full and honest attempt at being the sort of man worthy enough to share in her life.

My first official act in my newfound capacity was to have Major Swift posthumously elevated to the rank of General as well, thereby keeping Wren’s promise to my mentor and friend, albeit belatedly.

All in all I soon became accustomed to my once again altered lifestyle, so different from the lives of a soldier and adventurer I had previously lead, and felt a new sort of joy in my life with Wren suffuse me, of which I thought there could be no equal. That is until our daughter was born early last year. We named her Lark, fully aware of how fittingly the duality of her name’s definition could be applied to each of her parents; the songbird for Wren, and the anecdote in keeping with my general overabundance of jocularity.

It is difficult to say whose eyes Lark has inherited, for Wren and I now share that same shade of noonday sky, my wife’s having faded further while mine paled to match. Unfortunately Lark’s downy blonde locks already stick up in every direction. Wren is of the belief that it will behave more when it grows out; yet Quinten had grown his hair down to his shoulders at one point and it had never been tamed. I have yet to bring this to Wren’s attention. Perhaps Lark will someday take a liking to hats. Not that it would matter to me if her hair were never to lay flat, or if she never earns Will markings of her own. Because when those beautiful blue eyes widen at the sight of me and those little dimples grace her cheeks as she smiles and reaches for me, I cannot imagine anything more perfect in this world.

And so with wife, daughter and titles in hand, I have left behind the man I was prior to my return to Albion and have become someone else entirely. Still, Wren delights in telling me I am yet the same rabble-rouser she fell madly in love with on the battlements of Mourningwood, and to this day she and I will still steal away to those heights to spend an afternoon at the mortar, trying valiantly to break old Swifty’s record.

On the whole, this is a life I would have never before imagined for myself; a life that bears no resemblance to the adventurer a young boy from a settlement called Gunk had once dreamed he would become.

It is, by far, the most fortunate accident I’ve ever had the pleasure of floundering into.

  
_~fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End.  
> Ta-daaaa!  
> I’m glad that I didn't give up on this fic, despite all of the mini-disasters that came up while I wrote. It was more challenging at times to write this story than the others, and stretched my skills (what with having to write from the viewpoint of an old-fashioned semi-gentleman) so I’m happy with it.  
> This is for all those fans who always wanted to see the Princess end up with Ben (myself included!) I hope you liked it!

**Author's Note:**

> I published this on ff.net and deviantArt forever ago. Now that I have an AO3 account I thought I'd add it here, too. It was the first time I ever wrote a story in character and I have to say this is a story I am very happy with! I’d wanted to do a Fable 3 story for a long time. Like Ben I’d even had a story started before this one – plot line, sub-plot, time line – almost everything except a few key details that I was working out. Then I read what I had written, tried to fix it, growled at my computer when that didn’t work, started swearing at the monitor when things got worse and then finally trashed it (the story, not the computer.) Then I trashed the COMPUTER (totally unrelated but necessary) and lost everything but a few scraps. So I abandoned the entire idea for months and months until at last decided ‘DUH! Write it as a narrative!’ So here we are!


End file.
